[Steve]

Recently I decided to rebuild the 2-barrel stock Autolite carb. It worked ok; but i knew the accelerator pump was worn out because on acceleration the engine started to stumble. Very bad while warming up, and only on the hottest days was it a minor issue. I took it to an old timer who had a shop, retired and closed the shop, but was still working out of his garage.
The problem is upon install, nothing is set up. Idle mixture, choke settings, etc. What before had been a smooth-idling 302 was now rough and hard to keep idling. Strange; you'd think there would be standard settings an old timer would know to get started then fine-tune after complete warmup. There was a shop in town run by two older guys, one a Navy vet. They were the ones who set it up before; figuri8ng out what vacuum lines were needed and where to route them They had it purring like a cat. But they have both retired now and a son took the shop over. Maybe 30 yo. I took the car back to the shop, figuring it would take about a half hour, but they told me sorry, they don't know how to work on carburetors.
So I'm going to have to motivate and discipline myself to figure out this Autolite carb. It is a pita to get to the idle mixture screws. I've never worked on any carbs other than GM (Rochester and Quadrajet), and that was back in the 1970s. Oh well...