[Rollo Grande]

Alright here's the update, sorry been crazy this week, thank you for all your great suggestions!

Sometimes it pays to go and see the wizard. I took it to my retired Corvair mechanic, a 57-year Chevy veteran and admitted, "I can make it look good but I can't make it run right. Can you do your magic?" Don't know why I didn't do that months ago. We talked story and dicked around under the hood for a couple hours and he taught me things. Old mechanics rule.

#1 Incurable high idle? Throttle return spring was on backwards. I never would have noticed that.

#2 As several of you pointed out, the choke stove is missing. That solves the cold start problem. O'Reilly's said "Derp?" but I'll find one. Thanks Jeff, MJN and HO455 for the adjustment instructions.

#3 What I thought was dump truck gearing keeping me at 45mph was actually timing. When I got the truck it was at +4 and I set it at +8. Louis said, these engine rebuild kits come with some really random cams, you might not be able to tune it by the book. We have to guess what's in there but I bet if we go extreme on the timing it will have a lot more power. He set it to +16/18 and WHOLE. NEW. TRUCK. Tons of power at WOT, no backfires, and all the downstream problems sorted themselves out. Clutch no longer judders and the rear axle stopped binding up, two things that I thought were major mechanical issues. It's still geared low but 50-60 is easy, the tach reads in the 30s and probably still off by a good margin like you say. (Pretty sure its the original tach, although its not on the SPID.)

When I bought it on eBay last year the ad said "drives like it came off the assembly line in 1970" (with no exhaust, lol) but now it actually does. A week ago I hated this truck and now I'm really excited about it. What a difference.