Still love my car but......

I feel your pain all too well... I learned this all the hard way starting off with my Duster eight years ago knowing little to nothing about wrenching on cars and having no one around with experience to give me advice (save for this forum which I found a couple years later). I figured out that in the long run it saves a lot of time and money to just rebuild the whole damn thing basically from the ground up than try to struggle with rusty fragile 45-year-old parts being replaced one or a few at a time.

I hope you get your car back together and running well without any hiccups; not to jinx it but it's only a matter of time before more stuff breaks or falls apart from age so you'd better be ready for it lol.