Please help me diagnose this 273

The balancer moves about six degrees before meeting resistance and engaging the rotor. Is there an acceptable amount of movement?
It is not great, but would not cause the issues you are seeing. That would be about 4 degrees of timing retard due to chain stretch and chain/sprocket wear. The engine will be more sluggish off-idle and not have as good a throttle response, but it will not have anything like the low vacuum levels that you have found.