I really appreciate the comments, thank you!
Before the rebuild, the carb had quite a few leaks which I suspect were effecting the internal fuel/air circuits. The exhaust was always blue and there was bogging when going to wide open throttle regardless of how fuel mixture screws and float heights were set, should note the jets are appropriately sized. With the carb now rebuilt the plan is to do a base tune by checking engine behavior under certain loading. Then once I've had a bit more time with the tig, I'll weld in the bung for an afr gauge that I have, and really get into the finer points of tuning!
Top picture a Nitrous explosion??
Nitrous explosion would be both good and bad, bad for the obvious reasons, but good because I would have a complete NOS set up!