[Pinballer]

Thanks Tom. Besides adding a new regulator in and getting the fuel pressure back down to 5.5 lbs, I checked into the carb in the areas you mentioned and changed a couple things, and doing that improved the throttle response a lot and allowed me to bring the idle down quite a bit.
As far as the pushrod pop-out issue, I haven't changed any of the block or head geometry from stock yet, pushrods are still the stock length and nothing has been shaved down any on the head or block. I will on the next motor I do though so your advice will work wonders then. The rockers are still the OEM bridged pieces, so I'll just have to watch things and solve it one problem at a time from there. Valve springs might be a touch weak, I didn't go all out on those.

As of right now, the over-weight of the car is somewhat insignificant to me as I'm more interested in getting it to launch and run hard all the way down the track first. Baby steps.