85SS said "So basically, since i've got a carbed motor it's bound to be somewhat different but still similar. If i don't use a lot of pedal to accelerate, and wind out each gear, i'm more likely to burn less fuel."
My conclusion is the opposite. Shift sooner, keep the revs lower and open the throttle more - you'll less fuel that way. All this assumes you're under acceleration, headed up a hill, loading the engine. Once steady state speed is achieved, stay in the highest gear possible that will allow you to maintain your speed without lugging. That's true for naturally aspirated gasoline engines with efi. Diesels have no throttle, so just staying easy on the gas and keeping the revs down conserves fuel best in them. When boost is involved with gasoline engines, all sorts of things happen to fuel use when boost pressures rise - even at low rpm - mixture is usually made rich to help cool the chamber and reduce detonation. So for boosted vehicles, staying out of the boost as much as possible is the best way to conserve fuel. With a carb - it's hard to say. I think it probably depends on how wasteful the accelerator pump circuit is. If it's set to deliver a really big dollop of extra fuel when you depress the pedal, you might be better off staying out of the throttle as much as possible.
It's important to note that cars only use a very small fraction of the power available in most street driving. If you were driving a gasoline powered truck with a BIG load - so you really had to stay on the gas to accelerate it and maintain speed up hills, strategy would be slightly different. If you're using all the power available to you, then to use the least fuel you'd want to try and keep the engine in it's peak range of volumetric efficiency - which usually occurs around the torque peak rpm. But that's a fairly useless piece of info in most street driving because the engine only has to produce a very small amount of power - and going up to the torque peak will incur frictional losses because the revs are higher, and pumping losses because the throttle would be barely open at those revs with a very light load.
Stangbear - most carbs only want 4-7 psi fuel pressure - but the pressure has nothing to do with the way fuel is delivered into the engine in the way it does with efi systems. With an injector, the computer tells the injector how long to pulse - or open up. If you put a higher pressure behind the same pulse time, more fuel will be injected. Lower pressure = less fuel. Of course, pressure changes get 'adjusted' by the O2 feedback and adjustment strategies in the ecu. So if you jack the pressure up to put more fuel in, if the O2's are reading that as too rich, the ecu will simply reduce the pulse time in order to bring the mixture back where it wants it.
On a carb, the pressure simply fills the float bowl with fuel. When the float is raised enough, it closes the needle valve which shuts off flow to the bowl. Pressure differential is what pushes fuel into the jet/throat of the carb. The fuel bowl is vented so that atmospheric pressure is pushing down on the fuel. The jets are in the venturi/throat of the carb and they are subject to a lower pressure than atmospheric by virtue of the flowing air through them. That pressure differential varies proportionally to the amount of air flowing through the throat. So the more you open the throttle, the more air moves through the throat, the lower the pressure is. As the pressure in the throat continues to drop more and more - below atmospheric pressure - atmospheric pressure is able to push more and more fuel into the jets - which gets drawn into the carb throat. All changing the fuel pressure does is: 1) if you make it higher, the fuel bowl gets refilled more quickly, and the needle valve/float has to work to close against a higher pressure. At some point you may overcome the float's ability to shut if off and flood the bowl. Not good, 2) if you make it lower, it may not flow enough fuel to meet the loads of the engine when the fuel bowl is being emptied rapidly. But as you can see, that has nothing to do with the air pressure diffentials that cause fuel to be pushed through the jets into the throat of the carb.
Oh - I remember the old "Italian tuneup" days well. Back in the day, dad would have his car tuned up about every 10K miles. And it would run really bad for about the last 2500 of those miles - hard starts, missing, poor gas mileage. It was like getting a new car back from the shop when he'd have it tuned. They would load up with carbon, foul plugs, etc.
Things have changed so much since then however, as you know. Today's efi engines with high energy ignitions don't really care too much how you drive them - hard or not. Most plugs last between 60K and 100K. Fuel injection (because of emissions control) has become so precise that there isn't anywhere near as much stuff to foul up the chamber as there used to be. It certainly doesn't hurt to vary the revs and 'clean one out' every now and again. But it's no where near as helpful as it used to be. At 65K I pulled the plugs out of my wife's Bimmer. As I looked at the replacements and looked at the 7 year old/65K plugs coming out, other than the grime on the threads, I couldn't tell much difference. It was certainly a "guilt change" and nothing more. Couldn't tell one bit of difference after the change. A testament to the efficiencies of today's systems. And that's a 97 model. The 2004 stuff is even better.
It's just a simple question. If you could run a 12 second car and get 20+mpg, wouldnt you be interested? 
