I was the one that originally put the intake on and like I have done to all the intake valley pans gaskets I have put on this engine prior to the rebuild I put black sealant on heads and intake before bolting down and torquing. I also after a couple of weeks thought it was the intake so I pulled it off and put new valley pan with sealant and I still had the same symptoms after that. Yes I did more or less toss the phenolic spacer when I realized that was what was causing the fluctuation in rpm's. Like I said I at one time for a couple of days had an Edelbrock 750 on it and it was pulling 13 inches of vac. at idle. I have been tinkering with engines for years but this tuning of dist. and carb. I am ignorant to!
I still think my timing is way off along with my carb. running lean which is probably what is causing most of my problems. My set of dist. springs will be in tomorrow so I will be working on that. As far as the degreeing of the cam, the guy that built my engine has been doing it for years and he set the cam straight up per compcams recommedation due to all their cams having 4 degrees advanced machined into them already. I have no vacuum tees or power brakes just good old fashion 833 4 speed. The intake is mopar perf. dual plane and about 2 years old. There was at one time about a week or two after I got the engine back that I started working on the dist. springs and I know I had it dialed in at idle 15 degrees and 35 total in at around 2400-2500. Then I guess about 2-3 weeks later I rechecked it and the timing at idle was down to 10 degrees. That must have been about the time that spacer started leaking. I think the overheating of engine and the fact that I probably took off carb. and spacer at a time when it was real hot so maybe that is when it warped on me. Like I said it is out of flat approx. .002. I will spend the next couple days working on dist. advance and timing
then I will get back.