The popping is a lean condition with the throttle shut or nearly shut. The reason might be an air leak in the pilot system. The pilot system is the idle circuit. Can be choke plunger pads leaking, vacuum caps leaking, the smog hose on #4 vacuum port leaking, poor seal on the intake manifolds, bad orings on the mixture screws or bad exhaust gaskets. That is about it as far as air leaks. The other reason for "lean" is that the pilot circuit is lean. Shimming the jet needle won't make a difference as the jet needle / needle jet don't meter gas till you transition off the pilot circuit. The pilot circuit actually meters gas the whole time but since it supplies so much less than the mid-range circuit, its effect isn't all that great. The effect of the needle jet/jet needle with the throttle closed is negligible since the jet needle is fully seated in the needle jets. To richen the pilot circuit, you can adjust the pilot mixture screw out. From what I have been reading, this is pretty much the standard practice but I would look at buying a larger set of pilot jets... one size up from whatever is there now and turning the mixture screws out somewhat less as the larger pilot size will not require as many turns out of the pilot screw. If there are replaceable pilot air jets, then you could also downsize the those a tad as well but I prefer to use a bit bigger pilot jets.