Hey new here looking for some help

If you take the air cleaner off and post a picture of the carb, that would be helpful. Does the engine "ping" under hard acceleration? Do you have an RPM gauge? If so, what is it idling at? These are questions that might help diagnose what you have going on. Search both YouTube and the forum...watch some videos on-line on how to do this as a picture is worth a thousand words. Recommend you get a timing light and learn how to set the timing first. Once that is set, pretty easy once you identify the correct screws to turn based on your carb...if it's a Thermoquad the air/fuel mixture screws are the two in the front. A vacuum gauge is best, but you can set them by ear. Picture is a Thermoquad carb...you might have one similar. The air-fuel adjust are the two screws in the front on either side of vacuum ports and the idle adjust is on the far right (hopefully you just need to idle it down some). There are experts here who can walk you through much better than I, but doing some research on what you have, reading what's already been posted, then asking questions when you're stuck would be my recommendation. $1000 for a tuneup? Wow! I think you're smart to learn to do it yourself. Good luck!