I changed the oil, now Brad Penn 10W-40 "With High Levels of Zinc and Phosphorus!" Says so right on the bottle

The break-in oil did smell a bit gassy but no obvious metal particles. Only a very small amount stuck to the magnetic oil pan plug. Don't have a filter cutting tool at the moment but I saved the filter.

With the timing set at 34 initial, the idle is acceptable at 1000-1100 rpm and 6-7" vacuum and the PCV connected. Wideband showing mostly 13.5:1 although it does wander some between 13 and 14.

It does fight the starter a bit after several minutes shut down, but dialing out some timing from the dash took care of that. Guess I will have to lock out the distributor...

Disconnecting the PCV hose at the valve now causes too fast an idle (1600 and 9" vac). I can control the idle speed with my thumb partially plugging the hose. Hard to drive that way though.

Perhaps R. Dogdays had the right idea - drill the throttle blade holes somewhat larger, maybe to 1/8"...

At some point (soon) I'm going to quit tearing my hair out and send it to Thumperdart!