I got out and did a little work on the K30 today with a friend.
First, we rerouted my choke wire. It is a manual choke and for some reason it would not rebound well. When sitting inside the truck, I could pull the choke lever out to close the plates at the carb. When I pushed the choke lever back in to open those plates back up, it wouldn't move them at all. The wire would just "flex" if that makes any sense... the choke lever would just bounce back into the fully-pulled-out position after I tried pushing it inward.
Here's a photo of how the choke wire is routed now (silver housing coming out of firewall driver's side):
Before we rerouted it, the housing went out straight and then curved around the front of my brake master cylinder. It then cut back toward the firewall, went behind the distributor, and came back toward the carb. It was like a giant "S" shape. We were thinking those big bends in the housing may have been tripping up the cable. This new route seems to work well. I also squirted a little bicycle chain lube down the housing. It works well now, so we'll see how long that lasts.
Next I looked to see whether my accelerator pump is working. It definitely is, which is great news. I realized after not long that my gas pedal / throttle linkage is just super loose... there is a ton of play in there. The bottom of my gas pedal actually bottoms out on my floor before it can get to the portion of the stroke that would activate the accelerator pump. In order to get the accelerator pump to release gas, I think I have to push my toes down to make it slam flat against the floor.
Here's a video I recorded of it, sorry for how crappy my camerawork is:
View attachment PXL_20220305_234456419.mp4
I am wondering how to tighten things up on this system. When I pull all of the slack out of the cable under the hood, the eyelet of the throttle linkage extends
far past where it is supposed to attach to the carb:
Would I tighten things up from the engine bay side or from the pedal side within the cab? I was thinking that an easy way to tighten things up could be to do it from the pedal within the cab. In the video, you can kind of see that the arm bounces in-between two "stops" on the cable. I could perhaps position the pedal arm behind the "stop" that is closest to the firewall (instead of between the two)?
If it's better to tighten things up from under the hood, does anyone know if the "sheath" that my fingers are touching in the above photo can slide down? I tried but it wouldn't budge.
EDIT: Some bonus good news... I went to go look at my steering box bolts to make sure they were tight and that the frame wasn't cracked... somebody already installed an ORD steering box brace in there! Score!