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If you have done carbs before, Q-jets are not overly difficult to rebuild. When they are running right, they can be a very effeiciant carb too (provided you can keep your foot out of it).

Couple of things to look at before pulling the carb. Look at your choke adjustment. Could be set a little too much to the rich side of the scale. Do you know if it's the stock carb or one swapped from a 350? The 350's meetering rods/jets/hanger would allow it to run richer than normal too.

If everything as far as the external settings go looks good you might want to go ahead and get a carb kit for it. Get a new float too and an accelerator pump(if it's not part of the kit). Your float might be brass or plastic, either way if it's holding fuel due to a hole or porisity, it would force it to run rich. Take care in pulling it apart, use an old cookie sheet to keep from loosing parts. If you are unsure if you can get it back together, take some good digital pics of all 4 sides before you take it apart so you have it as a guide for re-assembly. Take it slow as a couple of clips and rods are tedious to remove, but it's not hard to do. Once you got it apart clean the throttle body/main body and lid in carb cleaner. Actually dipping the parts in a can of carb cleaner is best, but you can hose it down with spray cleaner too. Use compressed air to dry the parts off. Before you start the re-assembly, you need to check a couple of spots out. 1 Look at the shaft for the primary throttle and where it runs through the throttle body casting. This is a typical wear spot for q-jets as the throttle body bore where the shaft runs through oval out, causing a vaccum leak. If you have wear here, a couple of places sell a kit to drill the throttle body out and install bushings in the casting. 2nd, look at the underside of the main body casting. you should see a couple plugs. These plugs can leak fuel, causing a bump in fuel consumption. Simple fix is to mix up a batch of JB weld and seal up the seam between the plug and the casting. The rest of the rebuild goes simply, just pay attention to your float setting.

One suggestion I would make to anyone that is thinking of tinkering with a q-jet is to head down to the local bookstore and get the book titled: Rochester Carburators. It's published by HP books and is the best for instructions on rebuild and tuning.