I worked on her some this weekend and appear to have fixed some things and introduced a few new problems. I replaced all of the vacuum hoses and discovered a few things in the process. There was a crack in the elbow that connects the crankcase emissions to the oil vapor filter, and the oil vapor filter was completely full of sludge. So I cleaned it out and replaced the elbow. Also either the previous owner or a mechanic that he used had plugged the vacuum advance hose with a screw (???), it must have been done intentionally for some reason. I checked the diaphragm on the distributor's vacuum advance and it seems to be good (holding vacuum with my tongue) although I don't know whether or not it's actually advancing the timing as it should.

After making these changes I noticed a few things. It starts up great, in fact the idle is smoothest within the first minute or two of turning it on. It drives fine at higher RPM although it does seem to have lost some power. The funny smell I noticed before is gone (yay!). The idle now seems a little rough after the engine has warmed up. By rough idle I mean the idle rpm seems to wander a little, the digital tach on my timing light reveals that this variation is ~80-100rpm. I'm not sure if this is normal?

I checked the timing and it appears to be set properly at 10 degrees advance. I was a little busy this weekend so I didn't manage to get much else done (other than cleaning up some grounds... my blinker finally blinks at a normal speed!).

Another problem that is starting to concern me is the temp gauge. Every time I hit the accelerator hard it drops to 0 (even at a stand still). Then if I let it sit for a minute it wanders back up to 190. Perhaps some more rigorous testing with the multimeter is in order. On the plus side the fan does seem to be going on and off with some regularity still.