Check to make sure your choke linkage is not interfering with your carbs mixture they do hang up and stretch.Rich mixtures tend to stink and makeum smoke. Carbs:Remove air cleaners and housing. Start car and listen to the carbs breathe in air. It should almost sound sterophonic if they are in synch.Got to get close up to the bores to properly hear.Don,t burn yourself or hair.They actually used to have a device you could put up to your ears and carb throats to listen through. Sort of like an old grandpas trumphet hearing device found in old sears catalouges or the real fancy air flow meters with the floating bouncing ball.Sorry got reminising there. Visually look into the intake bore and observe how the damper is sitting on the bridge.Is it square or skewed. Hand actuate the piston and observe the motion of the neddle up and down to see that no obivious interference can hold up the motion. Check to see if your damper has oil in it. carefully remove damper housing top and see that the neddle jet is centrally located in the bore and see that it is not loose in its fitting. Is the neddle bent? I am a tool die maker and back in the B-18 B days I,d polish the neddle with very fine scotch brite.I also would burnish the seat but don"t you do that cause I custom made my tool for proper jetting size.We machinist call this Ballizing. As I remeber the gaskets must also be in place and not cracked or crimped.Check that mainfold gaskets intake and exhaust are in good sealing condition. Once in a great while I would fine a cracked intake but that was not to common.A cool thing to do is get your intake mainfold glass beaded blast internally to allow your car to breathe effortlessly, I had gone so far as to have a hot hard nicklechrome plateing done afterwards. Jet setting was somthing of a art yet I used to go by the burn color of the spark plugs and exhaust color.I forget what heat range we used on those plugs back then.

Valve: You will need special compression tool for springs as well as a means of holding up the valves from dropping into the bore. Carefully If you do each cylinder seperatley one can put a nylon into bore via spark plug hole then bring that piston towards TDC by hand rotation till compressing onto the valve bottoms via. the piston.We did crazy things in the pits back in the scca days. I always used the K_D tool kit for itusing compressed air. Check your rental house in town.Make sure that you grease up the valve stem and I used a straw over the vale stem to keep from tearing the rubber seal when installing the new seals. While you have it down that far you can check your valve stem fit to the valve guides.If they are sloppy you mind as well as pull the head and get them fitting up right cause your new seals on worn guides will not hold up very long. After all done reseat valve clearances and be sure to torque up the rocker arm assembly and valve cover.Also a good time to clean out oil flow gallerings in the rocker arm assembly at this time. Prelube up this assembly prior to installation.
Its been fun writing this and I proably missed some stuff and I am sure that others will fill in the gaps cause the Brickboard Rules!!! I am getting a bumper sticker ordered what a good compliment to mileage badges!!! We Need The Stinking Badges!!!( Blazzing Saddles) B-18-B withdrawl Mike