454 problems

[low&slow]

Got a stock 454 from a '73 Chevy, put in a '69. Ran fine for a really long time, until the carb quit on me. So, at the time I had put an Edelbrock carb on it. (4 barrel) Shortly after I had put this new carb on, it started over heating about 15 minutes into running and had a small whistling type noise. It was high pitched, but could barely here where it was coming from. At the time I didn't have any money to dump into it, so I parked it. Now for this past few weeks. My dad took the carb, so I had a holley double pump rebuilt and put on. Ran fine for about 3 weeks or so. Drove it all over the place. I was just about to sign the title over to another guy in trade for a '72 longbed 4x4 when my truck started to do the whistling noise again. This time it is still very high pitched, but it's really loud now and makes my ears ring. Needless to say I didn't get the trade. So back to the noise, my neighbor said its the torque converter because my transmission leaks, my dad said its my water pump (also for overheating issue), but as for what I think, I have know idea. The throttle linkage was set pretty high so it would idle a little higher, so I turned that down a little and as soon as I did that, the squeal stopped. But this morning it started to squeal again for about 30 seconds and then stopped. I went to town and back and it hasn't squealed at me yet.

So as for my rambling in as much detail as I can think of, Does anyone have any idea's??

Please help. It's my daily driver and I should be starting work again soon.