OK...
put one of those "boost' type carb hats on, had to use two circle gaskets as the eddy carb needs that plastic "extender" ring, fired it up with PCV hose plugged.I finally got about 1000 RPM idle last night,starts pretty quick, got some more info from Baxter on the motor personality too.
1)
Put the rag on the hat snorkel sloooowly, and the motor does NOT speed up,it dies.Did it several times, and just now realized I should have unhooked the brake booster, just to be sure.I will do this too in a little while.This shouldn't matter, but I have to be methodical.

2)masking taped over the oil fill cap holes tightly, plugged the PCV,hooked up a GOOD vac gauge to the dipstick tube and started her up at about 2K.
ZERO vacuum.Revved up to about 3K still no movement on the needle.

In all fairness, the valve covers are double gasketed, so not sure how great a crankcase seal I have, but that's what I got so far.
Going to recheck 1st test just to be thorough, and then tweak timing and check what initial versus total is right now.Updates later.