A few days ago I got the gasket kit in and replaced the leaky gasket in the chineseium carb. It barely helped and the truck was still running rich enough to smoke me out of the garage.
I had also pulled the glass bowl off of the Carter carburetor fuel filter assembly and found the gasket to be in pretty bad shape. I tossed it back together hoping for the best, but as soon as the truck was idling fuel started spraying all over the head and manifolds from the filter. I haven't been able to find a good source for those gaskets yet, so I picked up a sheet of cork from Tractor Supply and cut out a gasket. It's working for now so I have my fingers crossed it won't leak any time soon. I'll include a pic of that since it's the only picture I remembered to take of this whole fuel system fixing process.
This past weekend I decided to tear it down a bit further. I cleaned out most of the passages, replaced the needle and seat, and reset the float levels. Surprisingly to me, after just a little bit of idle mixture screw adjustment, the truck starts and idles like a dream and drives down the road even better than it used to. With that being my first success fixing a carb, it brings my total carburetor-fixage success rate to ~7%, but I'll take it.
After taking the freshly-fixed truck around the block I couldn't resist being a little dumb and I drove it down to the grocery store 5 minutes down the road. Unfortunately the fuel delivery stuff didn't fix the absolute wall the truck hits at 43mph, but I might have a lead on it. Despite the slow speed and upsetting other drivers, the truck made it there and back which was a huge win for me.
The previous owner told me that he was pretty sure the vacuum timing advance was inoperative. I've finally gotten around to giving it the 'ol lung test starting at the carb vacuum fitting, and it holds zero vacuum or pressure and the dizzy doesn't move at all. I'm not sure if it's the bellows themselves or the line yet.
I imagine it's possible that's causing the low top speed? Obviously the truck won't be a speed demon, but once it hits 43mph adding any throttle makes the truck feel like it's bogging and it makes some funky noises under the hood that I cannot identify. Either way I think I'll tackle fixing the vacuum advance next.
