When I put a ThermoQuad (back when you could still buy the aftermarket 9801s that were new) on an Edelbrock Streetmaster intake in my '67 Chrysler, I had to get an adapter to lengthen the kickdown rod (still had to shorten the rod itself to get the adjustment correct for what it was with the AFB). Personally, I'd stay with the Carter or similar new Edelbrock carb from my experiences with Q-Jets on GM products.
The Q-Jet is a good carb when calibrated correctly, but to get the top off the carb, you have to use a hammer and punch to move the roll pin holding the accel pump arm. Chrysler did use some on the middle 1980s 318 V-8s, when they could no longer get ThermoQuads, but I still like the AFB/AVS carbs better.
To their credit, there are multitudes of metering rods (primary and secondary) and power piston springs to tailor the Q-Jet to most anything you want to stick it onto, but not as easy to do that as with the Carters that have everything accessible without disassembling the carb. I'm just partial to Carters and Holleys as I know how to work on them, but others might have different orientations.
I do recall that during the later 1960s, the Chrysler OEM Holleys seemed to need rebuilds every year as the Carters just ran troublefree. Gaskets and such are much better on the Holleys now so they're much more troublefree and also have OEM replacement numbers on new carbs for Chryslers, even spreadbores.
There's enough adjustment in the throttle cable to make things work ok, just as with the cruise control cable, but the difference would be in the kickdown linkage adjustment as the throttle linkage is farther forward on the spreadbore carbs. Other than that, just swap the throttle stud from one carb to another. Don't remember about the "lost motion link", though, but suspect it can be adapted too. An electric choke setup will take care of that side of things too, if using something aftermarket.
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