As part of trying to get the truck running, I struggled with getting it to idle. I had rebuilt the carb with a kit from Daytona Carb but was having trouble keeping it idleing without a certain amount of choke. I also had to pour gas down the carb to start it. Too little choke --> died. Too much choke --> died. (Turns out I had the choke adjusted wrong - which compounded the difficulty of troubleshooting). Off idle, it would start to run better. I also noticed that it did not seem to respond at all to the idle mixture screw setting. So I figured it was a problem with the idle circuit. Took the carb apart, cleaned it several times, making sure to clean the idle passages. Put it together again an installed on the truck again but had similar problems. I was worried I had some junk trapped in the idle portion of the main metering body and was about ready to bin this carb and go to a back-up. After looking at the manual one more time (I have to say so far the only part of the manual worth a darn is the carb portion), I started tracing flow through the idle circuit. I was able to blow carb cleaner through all the cast parts no problem but something was still stopping flow. What could stop flow between the castings? The gasket. Yup - the kit from Daytona Carb for the main metering body was wrong, and did not have the hole for the idle circuit. See the pics below. I ordered another carb rebuilt kit, this time from Mikes Carburetor, and it had the hole in the right spot. Installed the rebuilt carb and it runs great (once I adjusted the timing). With the vehicle able to run a stable idle, I was able to check the timing, which had all the classic problems - it was about 30degrees advanced, and the distributor was stuck. After some penetrating oil and some gentle tapping, I was able to get it correct. Whew!
This is the idle circuit in the main metering body. The red arrow is near the hole that allows fuel from the main casting into the metering body
This is the good part from Mike's:
This is the bad part from Daytona:
The metering body with good part:
The metering body with bad part: