Any issue driving carbureted vehicle with choke pulled slightly out?

Little Fuel Leak could become BIG fuel leak, you need to repair this. A fire depends of fuel air ignition heat, gas leaking out onto hot engine has plenty of all 3.
 
The exhaust manifold on this car is directly below the intake manifold, which is part of the cylinder head. Gasoline leaking from the carb will drip onto the exhaust manifold.
 
Once you rebuild the carb and do an ignition tuneup, you will probably be able to further improve drive-ability by playing with the timing. With modern gasahol fuels, a lot of early 60's Fords need a bit more timing. Some lighter springs in the distributor that bring in the mechanical advance earlier can help, too. At a minimum play with base timing and try bumping it up to 8 or 10 degrees before top dead center and see how that goes. It probably uses manifold vacuum for advance so be sure to disconnect and plug it when setting the timing.
 
As @ripcord says, the factory timing is probably not appropriate for today's fuels, etc.
I would set the base timing for the highest vacuum at idle and then test drive the car.
Set the idle mixture for highest vacuum at idle as well.
 
Fix the external leak is step 1. You are about to learn why they say Fix Or Repair Daily. and Found On Road Dead. You got a 61 yr old vehicle there. I wouldn't drive it much until you spent some time going over every hose and line in the entire car. Not only that, the manual drum brakes aren't up to the power disc brakes of modern traffic. That is why I let a perfectly good '66 Valiant go cheap. It was scary in rush hour traffic.
 
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