Feeling in over my head and not sure what to do next

[dmjlambert]

Thank you all for your encouraging words and advice, I appreciate every word of it. I will take care of that return spring. I'm sure the one that is on there was a scrap from the garage floor. Are we talking about buying off the shelf 2 general purpose springs, or is it sold as an accelerator return spring? Universal one or buy one specifically for the C-10 or Quadrajet?

The yellow distributor wire is the stock wiring harness 20 gauge wire, I don't see any modifications of the wiring in that area. The wiring was rat-eaten in just a couple of places, involving the headlights and front turn signal, and human-eaten in the area of tail lights where somebody added a trailer connector.

For today's project, I was going to get rid of the inline filter, so I don't have that loop, and just get the filter for the built-in housing that is a part of the carb. I took the nut off and this picture shows what I found. There are 2 sets of threads, and the larger outer thread in the filter location is not used on my carb. The fitting I have screws into the inner set of threads and it has a smooth surface instead of the outer threads. Is this an adapter kit somebody put on there because they were having trouble with the built-in housing leaking or having stripped threads or something? Now I know why the filter nut felt "squishy" when I turned it with the wrench. It is because there is a big rubber washer in there. One thing about this adapter is it is hard as hell to get 3/8" fuel hose onto it over the barbs. I think the barb is for a larger hose, but 3/8" hose fits well on the pipe coming up from the fuel pump. Is anybody amused yet?