ncpetersc, welcome. I've been exactly where you are. Don't let it fret you too much. There's a lot of great info on this forum and the folks here are super friendly and helpful. Take baby steps just like you say.
There will come a point where it becomes more enjoyable than stressful, and that is when you've arrived at a hobby. Until then, it is true it can be a pain, but that's just because you haven't seen the light at the end of the tunnel. On a truck like yours with that Quadrajet carb and a Goodwrench engine, that light is
not an oncoming train.
Lots of great advice posted above from the other members of your team.
I encourage you to press on and pick a thing to work on and open a new topic to post pictures of what you're asking about, and ask your questions. We like to see questions and pictures. Ask for opinions.
I'm not a mechanic either, but learning. I am more comfortable with removing and replacing parts, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. It does cost more to do that, though, but that is the price you pay for getting started more quickly than taking the thing completely apart down to every individual bolt and screw. For example, I took my carburetor apart, and found some really weird stuff in there, and could not find anybody who could tell me what was going on. I tinkered and messed with it, and posted pictures, asked questions, stumped quite a few forum members with the weird stuff I was finding, then finally called time of death on that carburetor and ordered a fresh Quadrajet from National Carburetors. I was so relieved to get something that was ready to go, shiny and beautiful, and just bolted on and fired right up. That carburetor cost me about $220, which was probably about $50 more than a carb rebuild kit plus the cleaner and extra parts I would have needed to make it just a little better than it was before. And the thing came with a lifetime warranty, which I've already used once.
Your first reply from Ol Blue K20 was very good, you can move along in the project much better with a local friend. I joined nextdoor.com and I
highly recommend it. You can make a post like I did, where I asked my neighborhood "who around here knows about cars and likes to do shade tree mechanic work?" I ended up finding a
great guy who is very knowledgeable, he's a retired mechanic and does work on cars around the neighborhood for some extra spending money. When I'm getting ready to really screw things up, he can bail me out. I have him do the work on my more modern cars that my wife and daughter drive, and I have him do the things I can't handle on this truck or redo the stuff I've screwed up on my truck. He doesn't have any overhead, and doesn't charge much, because he's working out of his house garage. There's a lot of people who do that. In the city I used to live in, before nextdoor.com was invented, I met a couple of shade tree mechanics that ended up the best help ever, by asking at O'Reilly Auto Parts "hey, do you know any shade tree mechanics?" Sometimes those guys working at the car parts stores know who has a reputation for "knowing about old cars." One time I was in O'Reilly's and asked that question, and the guy just smiled and said "ask Bob over there" and pointed to a customer. Bob was a guy that was constantly in O'Reilly's buying parts, because he worked out of his house garage. I walked up and introduced myself, and he was the most fantastic mechanic, and charged about 1/3 to 1/2 of what a mechanic facility charged, and he did the job right. He was honest about what sort of things can wait and what I needed to get repaired right away. Bob even had little clear vinyl oil change reminder stickers printed up and used them when he changed oil in cars. One day my car wouldn't start, it was dead, and he made a house call for me. He crawled up under the car and gave the starter a whack with a hammer and had me try starting it, and then he drove it over to his house and changed the starter. It was fun having him for a friend and mechanic, and the only reason I quit relying on him as my mechanic is he moved a hundred miles away. I miss Bob...
OK, there I gave you a long post back! Hey, post some pictures of your whole truck so we can ooh and ahh over it!