Last summer my son put on a re-built rochester carb on his 69 malibu. After he installed it, it ran ok, but had a strong gas smell when he parked it in the garage. He took it into the local shop and they took care of the gas smell, but now it has a pretty bad hesitation when he steps on it. Any suggestion on how to correct? Thanks for your help.

I order to get rid of the richness, the shop may have leaned up the carb. This would decrease the amount of fuel being released by the carb. This could be the problem. Is the hesitation accompanied by a lean backfire? If so I'd richen up the mixture a little at a time until it was running smooth and not smelling like gas. It will take some adjusting and test driving before you get it right.

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Will Stewart
'71 Malibu

fijiman is correct, but it's probably that the carb is only too lean when you first step on it - the butterflies open up to let more air in but not enough gas goes in right away.
On a Holley, you change the size of the "shooters", check your float level, and play with your accelerator pump arm &/or cam.

On a rochester, there has to be something similar.....

If pump rod is in inter hole move it to outer hole . This will give you a stonger pump shot at tip in.

It may sound a little dumb, but have you checked to be sure that the choke is working? The reason I ask is that I used to have a Rochester that started doing the same thing. I checked it out and found out that the choke was stuck closed. A little obvious, but worth checking out.

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Will Stewart
'71 Malibu