You may be onto something, I did unplag the vacuum advance and saw little/no difference. Here is an additional item that I found a few minutes ago. With the vacuum advance leaking it has the plate almost locked so it doesn't move at all, in that position the ignition module is hitting the apex(s) of the distributor shaft, I wonder if it is bumping it and tweaking the timing and the spring in the advnace is pulling it back to do it all over again, essentially changing the timing a degree or 3 everytime it does it, in my thinking that could cause the surge. It also might explain way the idle went down hill once I started playing with it, not I was doing it but the can went bad/got progressively worse while I was tweaking, not necessarily related just coinsedence of timing.

What so you? Am I onto something? It obviously has to be fixed either way and there is no hope of adjusting everything else out with the distibutor issues.