The Dells I put on my 1600tp have made a big difference, but I'm a little concerned.
1) On idle they chirp in time with the pistons and it keeps chirping through low rev-range and then disappears once the butterflies open up a bit.

2) Also if you push it a bit at any range it gets a sort of angry chirp that backs off once you stop accellerating and hold the revs steady.

I thought at first that it might be just the air sucking through the carb or the jets or something, but I showed my dad the other day and he said it could be an air leak - which freaked me out.

So does anyone know if this is normal, or can anyone diagnose the problem?

Get a can of aerostart and spray *very carefully* around the carb to manifold joint and the manifold to head joint with the engine running. If there is an air leak the idle speed should pick up.

Alternatively, check any and all vacuum lines / hoses in the engine bay. My brother has an RX7 that had a real weird whistle (quite loud) that turned out to be a poorly fitting pressure sensor in the inlet manifold.

Actually, it does sound like a vaccum leak / air leak - when you boot it you will generate more vacuum, and it sounds like that is when it gets worse ?

yeah it sound a little deeper but not much louder.

Dellorto's do whistle a bit when driving, usually at mid revs under light acceleration, there was a kit avaliable to fix this problem which was a rubber spacer that stoped it.

If it is doing it at idle, it is probably a small vacuum leak

Is this a serious problem? Does it mean it will be running lean and could cause internal damage?

Did you block off all the vacume pipes? There may be up to 3 each side.

Brendan

inlet gasket on heads sounds like problem to me. put a bit of tube to your ear (stethoscope style)and search that sucker out.i got some nice gaskets of vintage to fix that.