Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm glad my storytelling and photography skills can keep at least a few people entertained.
Here's a bit more story:
I took the truck for a 50-ish mile journey a few days ago. I'm finding out that going 43mph is alot worse in town than it is on deserted old backroads. I was hoping to hold out for Novak's overdrive to come out and to put one of those on the truck (more on that later), but a rear end gear swap has definitely moved up a few notches on the 'ol mental list. Other than that the drive was going pretty well until I stopped at the local Harbor Freight, bought some cheap chinese junky tools that I'll lose before I break, came back out to the truck, and turned the engine over. Note that I did not say "started the engine." That's because the engine did not start.
Well, I was in a real pickle because hours before I revealed my dumb vehicular purchase to my father who was not very pleased with it. Because of this, although he lives close by, I couldn't immediately call him and ask for help because then his (completely fair) opinion would be proven true.
So I grabbed my toolbag out of the back of the truck, popped the hood of the truck, and started monkeying with stuff. At first I thought it was a fuel issue because I have bad luck with fuel pumps, so I started trying to figure it out. On my '66 Jeep I can simply pull the hood off (It slides out of the hinges via convenient slots), remove a hose clamp, and angle the hose to where I can see fuel spraying into a rag while cranking the engine over via the ignition key inside the Jeep. Between hardlines and no easy way of looking under the hood while running the electric starter, I was drawing a bit of a blank on what to do. I decided to see if I could get it running by dumping gas down the carb, so I grabbed my trusty Tru-Fuel, poured way too much down the carb, and got the truck fired up. I learned that it wouldn't stay running without me holding the throttle in a bit, so I thought "Well, maybe I'll mess with the idle speed." I got it to stay running poorly and quickly, but running nonetheless.
After limping to the gas station and nearly killing it a few times I decided that that day would be my introduction into carburetor tuning. I always say "What's it gonna do, not work even more?" and I decided to apply that to the poorly working carburetor instead of just completely broken parts as is normal. With only two screws to mess with and one being obviously the idle speed screw, my carb-dumb self was able to get lucky and get it running much better. Still pretty crappily, but good enough that I decided to risk driving the truck again, and I was able to make it all the way home without killing the engine.
After getting home I decided to do some digging and minor research. The first thing I learned is that the chineseium carburetor that's on the truck is patterned off of the original Rochester B carb, and the spare carb I got with the truck is a real Rochester B carb, possibly the original. The second thing I learned is that the "other screw" on the carburetor that I was ham-handedly messing with was the idle mixture adjustment screw. The third thing I learned was the truck ran best with the idle mixture adjustment screw screwed all of the way in. Hmm... I got the truck idling again and pulled the air cleaner (Surprisingly I recognized that it was an oil bath air cleaner before ripping it off, so I avoided dumping any oil on myself). I took a look down the carb and noticed a sizeable fuel leak coming from where the bowl meets the top 1/3rd of the carb, dumping fuel directly down the throat of the carb. That explained both why it would only run with the idle mixture screw turned all of the way in and why it would smoke like James Bond's Aston Martin at stoplights.
With that problem diagnosed I immediately moved on to ordering a rebuild kit, then 20 seconds later ran out of time and went on to more important things before actually getting a rebuild kit on order. I have what I think is the original Rochester B sitting on my toolbox, and the PO said he had it rebuilt at some point, so I may try to either disassemble it, clean it, toss it back together, and slap it on the truck or I may just steal the gasket off of it and use said gasket on the chineseium carb. I'm not sure if I want to spend too much $$ on this carb. I've read alot of mixed things on what carb is the best for these old trucks, but I don't see Rochesters named too often. Plus I eventually want to try out a bunch of different carburetors on my truck as my old-guy-pet-project and figure out what works best for me. So I'll probably just get it running as cheaply as I can to an acceptable standard and call it good until I put a different carb on the truck.
And some unrelated pictures that I just want to share:
Although the truck is a bit dead in the water right now, I did take it and the Jeep out and got a few good pics of them together. I wish I had a good camera, but I'm sure these will go on the wall eventually even though they were just taken on a cell phone. Anyways, here are the pics of that because I don't have any pics of the previously-mentioned carburetor adventure and word-only posts are boring:
