Last update on this thread.
I took it off the 1st clip and added a .020 to get to 1.5 clip position, road tested and only slight improvement with some pissing about with AF screws on the road, but shes still sick. Went home and put the 030 shim in. The sucky part is my driveway is 3 miles of washed out dirt and rocks so it's a process just to get to the pavement. Anyways, took her for a spin and did a few WOT bursts to get up to speed and she was very strong but then started missing terribly like out of fuel, I couldnt work it out with the AF screws so I gimped her home, she was hurting. I knew this was something other than needle positions.
Once home running on maybe 2 cyls, cutting and out I decided to pull the air box lid and look into the throat and found the two slides on the right side bound open. I removed them and made sure that the needles were all flat in there with the little white tit in the holes, they all were so I removed the needles, then the slides were free moving as normal. There was no dirt or debris and everything sat flat. so I removed and replaced the needles until they sat fairly straight and did not bind. I still cant figure out what caused them to bind but they are back in and working as they should, road test and it was still hunting a little at 3000-3500 and I was able to dial that out by backing out the AF screws a bit. Now she flat out rips again from idle on up. I'm not sure how much of the struggle with it on the 1st clip was clip position or sticky slides but shes back to running strong from idle to redline. If my MPG is much down from ~40 I may go put the needles back in with the .010 increments but if MPG is still good I'm done effing around with it until I get the sniffer. I have the AF screws out 3.5 - 4 turns and it's running very well again.
If anyone knows what would make a needle sit crooked and cause slides to bind when the needles, washers and everything are seated correctly and perfectly clean, please enlighten. I just took them out and messed with them until they sat straight but still not exactly sure what the deal was.