I don't know about others, and I imagine Drew has tons of experience with this, and maybe his reaction is different, but an obnoxious smell and burning eyes has always meant very lean to me. Rich has never caused my eyes to water, just smells bad, but not as noxious as lean.

Slowly closing the choke plate will definitely tell you if you're lean, by smoothing out when it reaches that fine line. It doesn't cure or figure out the problem of the idle jets not working, it's just an indicator of which direction it needs/wants.

Thats what i am going to do.  Also if a lighter pin, and rod would help it, but i don't know those weights yet.

     Yes, a lighter bob-weight would "probably" make the job easier!   And then although there's nothing wrong with the owner being "involved" in the process, but it 'is' the guy whom has been 'contracted' for the balancing service that 'should' be approaching 'you' concerning what would work to make the job simpler, or in some instances even just feasible.   

      Seriously, this issue isn't that uncommon, but I don't have your setup in front of me, and I'm not privy to the conversation you might have had with the shop, but when one experiences one of these, although, if one has any sum of experience, you might grimace with disgust saying "rats, another one!", it just kinda goes with the territory!   

      Of course, the shop might want to contact the customer to advise them that although "we can" balance it, it's moving into the territory of "time & materials" to do so!  Either that, or the customer starts spending additional money buying "other" componentry in the effort to reduce the costing in the balancing effort; which sorta just doesn't make a lot of sense, unless otherwise it has been concluded that it isn't feasible otherwise.  Which I really doubt in this case.   

      But, it sure would be nice, if the crankshaft manufacture's would "engineer" and "execute" the counter-weights 'properly'!   

      Scott.

Pond doesn't have any in stock?  It would be a shame to pay $10k for some mock-up heads when you can buy what you'll be running for just over half that.

another thing i always do with headers is smear a little silicon on both sides of the gaskets. since doing that i've not had a single blow. maybe the bit that squeezes onto the bolt threads stops them backing out. who knows but it works, even if using the stock shiny manifold type gaskets on headers.
neil.

If the wires from your pickup are not twisted together, try twisting them up.  Twisting the wires together along their full length allows the wires to reject EMI through the principle of common mode rejection where the EMI affects both wires equally and cancels out.