No idle on the rebuilt 250 JohnRude???

[Instigator]

Put about 2 hrs on the rebuild of the '99 250 Ocean Pro that I melted down.
Had tools with me to do everything but low speed carb setting. I had all six carbs apart/cleaned and reassembled and set adjuster screws at 5 turns which is factory spec "starting point". This motor has always idled like **** and I screwed up by not counting turns when tearing down.
I double and triple checked everything to where I was fairly confident I was'nt going to re-roach the same motor. I also closed off the exhaust to eliminate the lean condition that caused my melt down.
Above 1500 the motor ran perfect, pulled strong etc. Once I would back down to an idle it would lean sneeze and die.
As you can imagine, I am very nervous running this thing!
I checked plugs and piston crowns today and it looks good, still a little lean but OK.
The only thing I could find was my carburetor linkage was a little off changing to a new block and it was holding the butterflies partially open at idle. My hope is that this was enough to where the carbs wer'nt pulling enough vacum to suck fuel at idle???
Any suggestions???

[seacow]

we are generally seeing that 6-7 turns are necessary for our area, i think that they usualy come at about 6 turns from factory, the slight opening would cause the problem that you were talking about, you may also want to sinc. the individual butterflys at the allen head screws between them.
good luck

[Instigator]

I backed screws out another turn and already sinc'd butterflies and linkage. Will test as soon as we get a break from our **** Memorial Day weather. 65 and rain all freaking weekend!