Sounds like it's set up pretty well just the way it is. Older cars with carbs usually have a slightly sooty exhaust.
I agree with Al, @Sacto Mitch, but you don't need either of us to tell you that you have this thing nailed, since you're where you should be all the time, and when you're not your with some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend,
etc.
You (like el Guapo-ness) have developed a finely tuned sense of Hakuna Matata, if not in every area of life-- certainly as is pertains to these cars. You've spoken eloquently of dancing with your car and living at peace with what she gives you. To hear you tell it, that swing-axle Vintage Speedster is like some shy orphen kitchen wench in a bad Hallmark movie or one of your wife's bodice-rippers, just waiting for the gentle touch of a sensitive man to make her blossom into something all hot and quivery.
Of course, some of that may be the result of having schlepped through life as one of "God's poor souls", forced to compensate for your lack of blue-collar skills with your early retirement, (self-confessed) over-endowment, and rugged good looks.
One does wonder how you've been able to get by.
Again, for the kids in Pekin, IL-- my friend Mitch, with the 5-speed:
Had you but made a different set of life-choices, (like say, staying in the 6 month long slushfest out east) spending all your disposable income on car-parts and tools (rather than gym memberships and massages), you may have acquired some "garage-chops" and developed into a perto-masculine specimen compensating for his lack of masculinity and female companionship with a jacked up truck, dwelling in a 1200 sq/ft house with a 2400 sq/ft garage, and looking like this:
... if only.
You needn't feel bad-- for we, the highly advanced represented in the second picture will continue to improve and develop these highly technical, space-age, 1930's-designed rocket-ship lawn-mowers with fancy doo-dads and Buck Rogers gimcrackery-- for you and for the good of all humanity. We're just cool like that.
You and @MusbJim will have to compensate for your shortcomings by going out in your perfect weather, cruising on your perfect ribbons of blacktop running through your postcard-worthy scenery out in your gorgeous "Golden State", eating shrimp tacos down at the surf-shack, skipping school, and enjoying your kale smoothies and avocado toast with Hollywood starlets and titans of industry.
Your ample (and growing) passive-income portfolios can never compensate for the "highly useful " knowledge you might have acquired by burning all the money you might have earned by kneeling behind a rooftop HVAC unit to shield yourself from the blizzard you might have endured
... but I suspect that somehow you'll learn to cope.
