OK, I did manage to get the one carb unit in question off the block last night. Everything went quite smoothly, except when I was trying to get one of the linkages (ball & socket) apart so that I could lift both carbs off as a unit. I did know that there are those little wire clips which one undoes before trying to pop the ball out, but no ammount of leverage and prying would pop the one I was trying to undo out. Luckily when I started to pull both carbs off of the block to see if I could get better leverage on the linkage that way, the carb unit to the rear slipped off of it's linkage lever and I found that I could just take that one off seperately.

I'm wondering (for future reference) if anybody has heard of or has a special tool for seperating these ball and socket linkage joints? It sure would be nice to have a specialized tool that really works well for those. I also have an old mercedes with those same type of linkages. I just tried a google-search on "carb linkage separator", but that didn't pull up anything. I wouldn't know what to call such a tool. Do you think they would have such an old-school tool at NAPA and the like auto-parts stores?