If your exhaust is giving off an unusual amount of water vapour and smells sort of sweet like coolant it is entering your combustion chambers. Sign #2 are the spark plugs. If they're super clean, they're getting steam cleaned by coolant. You might not see coolant around the base of the carb as it is leaking internally. Some guys do bad things to engines - like using the workshop floor to grind off carb gaskets (some a-hole pulled this on my truck way before I got it and ruined the carb...) Hand made gaskets are o.k. and sometimes better depending on who and how it was done. I'm going to recommend you find a good intake manifold for your engine. If the mounting bolts are no longer capable of being tightened enough it will cause both vacuum and coolant leaks.
Good luck, it shouldn't take much effort to getting it sorted out.