Motor bogs down and dies

lunny24 wrote: I looked at everything again tonight. Unfortunately, right now I don't have the tools to thoroughly check the vacuum hoses and pressure. With that said, I noticed that when I push on the gas the accelerator pump lever takes about a second or even two to catch up with the throttle lever. Is this normal? I heard that if a carb has been sitting for awhile the pump may hesitate a little and it should be better after 24 hours of use but haven't actually tried it. The hoses all seem fine but I will likely change them all out anyway.

When properly adjusted and with what ever combination of vacuum hoses in place correctly a carbureted car is difficult to tell from one that is fuel injected.
At least as OEM configured.
If heavily modified it generally takes one to be fully warmed to run that well with instantaneous throttle response.

There are a handful of things that can cause the symptom you are describing with everything ranging from incorrect timing, improper carburetor adjustments around the choke settings and idle mixture and rpm settings.
Vacuum leaks up to and including incorrect vacuum connections. They can look fine! And be wrong.
All of these were eliminated by in large when port injection became a standard. Thus instantaneous self tuning etc.
With a Carburetor and Stand alone ignition they all take some one to verify when things are correct.
Lacking the tools and the time to actually verify things are correctly adjusted, I really do not know what to suggest other than?
Take the time to do a step by step tuneup by the numbers and see to it things are actually as they should be!

Tonight I had very little time to look at it again but I may have found the problem (without a vacuum gauge.) I expect the vacuum hoses need to be replaced which is what I was planning anyway. One hose specifically connecting to the distributor vacuum advance was fairly loose. Loose enough to pop off when I installed the new carb. I had some old hose lying around so I cut it to size and then installed it and the car acts much better when I floor it. I drove it a bit and I would say 1 out of 5 times I floor it (of course, I wouldn't be driving it like this at all...but to test) it almost stalled. In fact, this time I heard a click/pop at the same time which I didn't hear before. Now clue what that might be...Anyway, seems the new hose and tape (again...I will replace soon with a real hose) fixed the problem fairly well for now. I'll replace all the vacuum hoses and see how it runs then.  

Easter egg hunts suck and are very expensive.
Borrow a carb and try it.

Hint... I would bet the farm that it aint the fuel pump.

The adjustments available to you on an early AMC V8 are quite simple.
On the carburetor there are two adjustments on the throttle linkage, one having to do with the idle speed when the choke is on the other having to do with the idle speed when the engine is warm and the choke Is off. On a 2bbl carburetor there are two mixture screws which only are functional if the idle speed is correctly set. They come into play when the throttle butter fly is almost closed. If idle speed is set to high an rpm, the idle mixture screw =s are pretty much of no use at all. They DO NOT LEAN OUT THE CARBURETOR!!!! They only control the mixture of the idle setting.
Then you have the idle timing adjustment made at a low rpm and with the vacuum advance to the distributor disconnected. These adjustments in and of themselves are not very critical at all. They are though heavily dependent on being made at the proper point in a sequence of events.
You say you have replaced all the vacuum lines. What guideline did you use to determine the vacuum lines actually went where they belonged? If they are not properly connected any number of problems can occur, specially if adjustments are not being made in a manner that they should be made.

I POINNT OUT THE VACUM line correctness by in large the reasoning being rarely is it actually correct when attempting to discover what is wrong with your vehicle.
Specially one that has just been purchased and is defined as being in trouble and the adjustments have bee "Played" with in order to make it run better.
What is the year and size of the engine and I'll see if I have vacuum diagrams for it.