My car is a 1970 Mercury Cougar that originally had a 351 Cleveland with a 2 barrel carb. The carb was swapped to an Edelbrock 1406. The car runs good once you get going but has issues with starting and idling. It starts when you hold open the choke but for the most part just dies if you don’t keep it held open or pumping the throttle. Any ideas? I did take off the choke cover and I know the coil is heating up properly. I also noticed that the choke is missing a part that I can see in pictures of chokes. My dad said that you have to hold open the choke further than you should have to as well. I have attached an image with the part this choke doesn’t have. It doesn’t have the piece with the slot in it.
Can you post a pic of what yours looks like for comparison?
Well now she’s starting but just stalls after idling for a little bit 
If you are missing the baffle plate in the choke, you’ll likely need to replace that part to get the choke to adjust and operate correctly. Edelbrock has plenty of on line info on setup, choke adjustment and idle settings. I have a 1406 on my 351w and it is pretty simple to adjust.
Okay, I got a new baffle plate and am still having problems. The guy I bought it from said he had cleaned the carb. The car was just sitting in his shed. Just wondering what you guys would check first. I am not an experienced mechanic 
Sounds like you are new to the Cougar world. Welcome.
I would advise you to get yourself a vacuum gauge. The Cougar has many systems that rely on your engine creating and holding (not leaking) vacuum.
A reading above 15 inches of mercury (preferably 18 or more) is required. Unfortunately, many of those systems can leak… I’ve had leaks in the brake booster, headlight system, carb gasket. And if one or more are leaking your engine performance will suffer. The engine can run OK when it is running rich (like when choked) but run badly once the idle goes off.
The vacuum gauge needs to be hooked up to a source that provides manifold vacuum. The best place is directly on the manifold itself. The carb may have a source of manifold vacuum but may also have a restricted vacuum port so be careful if trying to get vacuum reading from the carb.
If/when you have verified that you have good vacuum, you can move on to other potential causes. If you have low vacuum at the manifold you will have to figure out where the leaks are. Let us know what you find and we can help you isolate the leaks.
Okay so it’s been a while but I’ve been working on other parts of the car. I just was trying to figure out the issue again last night and have a question. So what happened was I unattached the fuel line (before and after the fuel filter at different times) and tried cranking to see if any fuel would come out. Nope nothing happened. Then I tried using our vacuum tester to suck some fuel up and that worked fine. Just wonder if it’s possible that the fuel pump is bad but that the car would run fine after it gets going or if you keep the revs going? The car will fire if you put some fuel in the carb or spray some starter fluid.
My car is not the same engine wise or carb wise. However, what you are describing is exactly what happened on mine when the fuel pump was going bad. You can check fuel pressure, mine was very low until the engine got going.
Okay I replaced the fuel pump and that was obviously some of my problem but the car still does not idle properly. I am now getting fuel to the carb but the fuel is dirty. The guy I bought it from said that the tank had been replaced and I can see that that is true. Should I replace the fuel lines and clean the tank or is there some other thing you would recommend?
Just because the outside of the tank looks good doesn’t mean that the inside is clean. Mine looked new from the outside but it was completely rusted inside.
If you can, remove the fuel sending unit and take a look inside to see how bad the tank is.
Ya ok I’ve got it out and looks to me like it’s decently clean. Not rusty anyway. I’ll try to clean it up some but I think that isn’t the cause of the dirty fuel. I’ve got stainless tank to pump lines ordered.
I replaced the tank and all lines up to the pump… and replaced the pump. It’s the only way to really be sure.
Often issues like poor idle quality and stalling are caused by improper ignition timing, which leads many folks to start replacing everything in the fuel system. After they run out of things to replace, they then will try checking and setting the timing properly to solve the problem.