After putting in fresh fuel and trying to run it for a few minutes the choke does seem to be sticking a bit. The truck just recently had a tune up, but I am pretty sure they didn't change the ceramic.
I should have really thought of that, my father used to have a Monarch and we used to carry at least one spare ceramic in the glove box.
When working on it what I found is that it sounds like it is getting too much fuel, and if I leave it for a few minutes I can go out and it will start right back up again. This is why I suspected the carb, as I thought maybe the float might be sticking or not working properly, but maybe that would be the same if the choke were sticking open as well.
I think I need to do some more work on it, and see. It starts hard, until it has started, then it will restart rather easy if I wait a few minutes. I do not remember having to always pump the gas on my fathers car when it was running properly, and that was about the same age, although that had the 318 in it.
So just to re-cap, new fuel pump, new fuel filter, recent oil change, hasn't been run in a while before I got it, so the fuel was old, but I have put in fresh gas, and now I can not get to the end of the driveway before it stalls out, like it has run out of gas. I can keep it going if I feather the fuel and it is in park or neutral, but if it is in gear I can not keep it going. Choke seems to be sticking, but it will kick down if I give it lots of throttle a couple of times.
I am going to be working on it for the next few days, and I will buy a ceramic, and try that, as well as some choke cleaner, see if that will loosen up the choke some.
At the end of the day, if it does seem like the carb needs rebuilding, it would not be all that big of a deal, as the single barrel Holley is a pretty easy carb to rebuild, just a little harder than a Makuni.
I just hope the cost of the ceramic is not too prohibitive, I seem to remember they were about $70.00 back in the 80's, but I think I have seen them for less on Rock Auto. If it is quite a bit more I may have to wait until after Friday to buy the ceramic.