LH says Am I the only one here who thinks there might be moisture ..., thus confirming that he didn't read the prior posts (we knew that), or lacked understanding (he could ask Chongo) and thus didn't see the preceding half dozen(?) suggestions relating to this diagnosis.

mg: There is no such thing as "only a girl." Please remove that, and related blather from your vocabulary and from your thinking.

In one past instance when one of my vehicles had similar symptoms, changing the fuel filter produced the most positive results.

I don't have service data for your car, but you - or your mechanic - may find a filter in the carburetor body where the fuel line enters, although this one usually is "omitted" on more recent models and may have disappeared on yours.

There probably will be an inline filter tucked up beside a frame member "down under" the car. This style is easiest to replace, and is most prone to getting "gunked up." The usual cause is water/sludge in the fuel tank although even with a clean tank the fuel will contain enough "bits of crud" to require eventual filter replacement. If the filter is blocked enough to prevent full fuel flow on startup, stalling when engine rpm drops back to idle is common. Most such filters have a "bypass" that allows some fuel to pass even if the filter element is seriously plugged, and after you've run enough fuel through to "flush" it, it opens up a little more - but the crud "sets up" when it sits without running for a while, so the problem repeats.

A few vehicles have had a filter inside the fuel tank but usually the only in-tank thing is just a coarse "strainer" that shouldn't clog.

With the age of the car, if the filter is clogged it's a fairly normal thing, just from the amount of fuel run through it; but it is possible for a fuel tank to accumulate rather large amounts of water and some sediment. Small amounts of water can sometimes be cleared by adding a "fuel line anti-freeze" with each of a couple of tanks of gas. "Dri-gas" or many similarly named products are commonly available, and are basically just alcohol, which absorbs the water and allows it to be sucked out with the fuel as the car runs.

These "fuel additives" are very rarely effective if there's a large amoung to water in the tank, and removing what's in the tank, and replacement with clean fuel is the only remedy.

Your mechanic probably can estimate whether there's significant contamination in the tank to require cleaning by pulling a small sample of the fuel during replacement of the filter - especially easy if it's the "body rail mounted" one. If there's water, it will settle out when the sample stands for a while and will be visible.

If there is significant water in the tank, it's necessary to remove all the liquid possible from the tank, to get it out. Some shops prefer to remove the tank for cleaning but this is "major surgery," is actually rather dangerous, and isn't usually necessary (IMO). Careful draining and siphoning to get "as much as possible" usually suffices.

Water can be separated from the fuel after it's been removed from the tank, by straining through a piece of real chamois. (Lots of "chamois products" are actually synthetic and don't work for this.) The gasoline runs through, but the water doesn't. I've had no problems with returning gasoline thus filtered to the vehicle¹, but opinions vary. Some mechanics prefer to "discard" it (i.e. put it in their vehicle and sell you fresh stuff?).

¹ In one specific case, I siphoned 7 gallons from a tank and recovered only 3 gallons of fuel. The rest was water. This was from a car only about 3 years old, - - - but the humidity is pretty high in the Seattle area ... .

If a new fuel line filter doesn't solve the problem, the "emissions systems" are probably the most likely cause for your problems in a car of this era. These include lots of "vacuum tubes" that can leak, the PCV and EGR valves, and a few other "devices" that vary between different brands and models. In the era when yours was built, PCV valve replacement was a "scheduled maintenance" item, so it probably should be replaced as part of a tuneup. Other items require identifying which ones need attention.

Electrical component "leakage," as mentioned by LH and numerous others is another possibility. If you're going to trust a service shop to do the required replacement, you probably can/should trust them to find the problem.

And once again for LH - most states I've seen that inspect for rust specifically prohibit "duct tape" patching. A usual requirement is "no daylight visible through the hole" but a permanent patch method (not quality) is required.

I've gotten by with stuffing some crumpled newspaper behind a hole, slathering on some Bondo, and filing just enough to remove the rough spots.

John