tdracer
Your post certainly looks to me like you saw the wall as something that normally would be between the pilots and FE.---the FE repeatedly violating the invisible wall. The reality is as an FE having about 30 years on 747 Classics I cant see why this would even be worth mentioning if you didn't have a problem with it.
In ref to the mismatch engine situation, while it was not common it did occur, particularly during an engine upgrade project. My company also had for a short period an orphan B747 100 which at one stage had 4 different engine status. That one was a full time job on throttles alone.
Overall from my extensive discussions in the late 90s with USALPA, they seemed to have an unrealistic attitude to FEs that was industrially biased and based. That attitude was endemic to the North American based system that I spoke about.
Airbubba
On the technical side I have had a look at the DC8 fuel system and except that the fuel selectors were mechanical rather than electrical, I still cant see much difference to the B707 or for that matter the B747. The one advantage of the DC8 system is it appears to allow tank balancing from any main tank to any other main tank in flight. Given there are 4 engines on a DC8,I cant see how anyone could fly for any length of time without balancing the fuel and with any fuel balance it needs to be monitored, not just looked at every half hour from the front