Id like to start by saying we've done a ton of stuff to this car to get it to this point already. The car runs, and runs pretty decently.

About 2 months ago a buddy was looking for a car, me being a big Honda/Toyota person, i started sending a ton of links to cars. The one he chose was this 87 civic with a salvage title with only 76,000 miles on it. Yes, it's original. It's pretty apparent all over the car. Im the mechanic friend, so ive pretty much been doing all the work to the thing. That being said, its the first time ive really dealt with a carburetor on a car. Ive mostly dealt with small engine carbs before. Im not a carb expert by any means you could say.

The car initally ran okay, but definitely wasnt super safe to drive in the road. Nonetheless, made it 2 hours home from Washington DC. It definitely did not like anytime he tried to open the throttle up hills or anything like that. So we started by taking the top hat of the carb off and cleaning it thoroughly, blew out every single jet until you could see clearly through them, checked the float level, all that general stuff. We found that some of the jets were pretty clogged up, and the secondary wasn't exactly functioning. I hate vacuum ****, and we live in WV where emissions don't matter, so we went ahead and did a full vacuum delete following the 3 part video by Junkyard boiz on YouTube. Now the car actually runs MUCH better, the secondary is functioning and it's a big difference. Still has a pretty rough spit in the exhaust at idle but it's fairly unnoticeable inside the car. We dont have the PEK to adjust the needle properly, but I've done what I can by ear without going too crazy. I think it's at about 3-3.5 turns out currently. Aside from the air needle, there's only an idle and float, so there isn't a whole lot of adjustments that can be done. We adjusted the timing as well, again most of this just kind by ear and what feels the best. The car is currently getting 16MPGs in mixed use. We know thats terrible, but we are wondering what the community suggests we check into the most. We realize the devacing is going to decrease it some, but 16 seems far fetched for a little 4 cylinder that was supposed to run so lean they had to add a precombustion chamber just for the damn thing to run. Lol we'd also really like to solve the slight rough idle it has spitting and sputtering out of the tail pipe.

valve adjustments?
timing with a light plugging the vacuum advance?
get the PEK and do the air needle properly?

any advice is highly appreciated. Thank you.