I would add. Don't be scared but be informed.
When I started a couple of years ago I never touched a carb in my life, never changed engine oil, never changed a filter, never touched a spark plug.
I knew I was over my head very fast but what I did was read, read a lot, watched videos online, asked for advice, then I made many many mistakes but I learned from them and built up my knowledge and experance.
You could look up your type of carb and within a couple of minutes find a detailed rebuild article or video showing what to do. I mean it's not rocket science , take photos for each step you do, take a video of you working on it on the bench so you remember where parts go. Do one area at a time, you don't have to take everything apart start simple open a fuel bowl and see how full of junk it is.
Or save the carb for last and remove it and Inspect the gasket it sat on does it have an imprint of a seal on both sides for the carb base and the intake base that would tell you that area is sealing. With the carb back out of the way you inspect the seal for the intake manifold see if you have new leaks. Check to make sure you installed all the correct hardware.
There was a issue on v4 heads with aftermarket intake manifolds were 2 of the bolts needed to be longer because the heads were deeply tapped in those 2 areas and it caused a massive internal vacuum leak with the lifter valley. And people confused where those long bolts were suppose to go.so people would go insane and couldn't figure it out I remember edelbrock started to include supplemental directions talking about it.
I remember you said the car ran better before so you have to assume the work you did is the problem and then backtrack it to the source of the problem.
We are diagnosing through the internet based in what you tell us so something you think is not important might be.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I would strongly suggest you find a local hobbyist to give you a hand. When you are afraid to rebuild a carb for fear of making it worse, I suspect you lack experience and without a certain amount, all of the information we provide gets very hard to digest and process.
Also long distance diagnosis is hard-we respond to the information you provide, but being there in person, I would bet we could narrow down the cause(s) of your problems quite quickly.
