Good morning everyone! Well it looks like the last thing on the list is the vacuum advance diaphragm. I did like you said and pulled the metal line off and it has vacuum going to the carburetor but when I hooked the vacuum (shop vac) to the diaphragm, I got no movement. How big a job is this to change? it looks like at glance the distributor has to come off. please say "it ain't so"! And lastly, do you ever get to "drive" these trucks??
Yes, you have to remove the distributor. You won't soon forget when you finally get to drive your truck for the first time, especially when you did the work yourself!