you don’t need to torque them. they have stops. tighten till they stop, then give it one more good umph and it’s good.

these cars are drive by cable, so what you can either do is 1: put a higher tension spring on each of the throttle linkages on the actual carbs, or you can attach a custom return spring onto the pedal itself.

was your parking brake slightly engaged? usually when you smell burning when braking is either someone left the parking brake on, a caliper is sticking, or they were just very hard on the brakes (mountain driving, constant speeding up and slowing down, anything that makes them hot etc)

to me it sounds like it simply ran out of fluid. when an automatic transmission gets low on fluid, when starting from a stop it will violently kick into gear as you described, and if it completely runs out of fluid it will just stop working. When a transmission is failing there’s often tell tail signs. like grinding, whining, or slipping(when shifting from one gear to another in the middle it acts like it’s in neutral and you can rev it in drive without going anywhere, then it will catch). I have never heard of a “governor” on a transmission before. once rebuilt it should have a break in period of a thousand miles or so, but will be fully functional. this whole situation seems sketchy to me. I would take it to a different shop for another opinion.

Personally, I think any car you own is better than payments. But before you make any decisions make sure to verify these issues yourself as it can save you money and it’s a good skill to learn. Tires at a minimum should hav 2/32 tread to be considered “safe” to be used with no significant dry rotting. Brakes need to be changed with 2MM of pad life left. Thoes may be harder to tell if your inexperienced, but if there’s no vibrations, grinding, or squeaking you will most likely be okay for a bit. Struts you can put off doing basically until they don’t hold the car up. I was running 40 year old shocks on one of my cars for a while with no issues. Transmission fluid can be checked yourself easily as well. pull the transmission dipstick, and look at it. it should be cherry red, and should not be smelling burnt. Although these are not the worst engines Kia ever made, they did not have a good streak in the early 2000s and had lots of problematic engines. There was an issue with the timing belts with them sheering and breaking. if they do break it can destroy your motor. I personally would do the timing belt, tires if needed, trans fluid id needed, brakes if needed, but I would not get rid of a perfectly good running car that you own outright for something you would be making payment on that you also don’t know how well it was driven or maintained. just because it’s a honda dosent mean it will run forever. these cars are only as good as they were cared for.

1: when turning the key does the engine crank? does it click? if so how many times? is there just nothing?

no you don’t have to. they will work better if you do though.

if the trans is slipping at that low millage, it either means it was abused or there was a manufacturing defect most likely.