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Can tou spray carb cleaner or starting fluid at the point the intake mates to the heads and see if it idles faster revealing a vaccuum leak without harming your engine paint? Sounds like a bad vac leak to me too. My intake is at the machine shop right now after deck bieng cut .018 and new heads being milled .020 (if I remember right) the lower part of the intake at the ports didn't even touch the gaskets, I used a brush to paint the intake (orange same color as engine)where it mates against the gasket then quikley bolted it to the heads to check port match, thats when I found the problem, it only left paint on the upper portion of the gaskets. If not it also sounds like when I used to wash the engine bay of a car I used to own, not saying yours is wet but maybe a cracked rotary button or cap crossfiring under a load. Sorry to here your having so much trouble getting it going though, I hate when that happens. Good luck and hope you find it soon.

The more I think about this it does sound like some kind of vacuum leak. Unfortunatly, if the intake isn't mating correctly to the heads the only place that it would leak is on the under side. Don't know if I could spray anything there. Maybe just removing the intake and checking to see how the gaskets were compressed might help.

Rotor and cap along with just about everything else is new although I suppose one or the other could be bad. Never had this kind of problem on any of the motors I've built before, thank God, but this one has me stumped.