340 Chugging instead of Reving

inertia said
All my schooling and experience has taught me to eliminate all the obvious easy stuff before going deep .
I'm not saying the plugs are THE cause, but that oil fouled plug will likely misfire under load .
If it's still sucking oil, that's a vacuum leak, is that okay, let's ignore it !
Do you, would you run those plugs in your car, and ignore them if you had a misfire ?
And are you suggesting locking the distributor is the cure, and now many times in you career have you cured a 3000 rpm wall with a timing adjustment ? ?

If detonation blows it up, are you gonna pay to fix it ?

Not sure why you sound so offended. We all are merely offering suggestions to help diagnose his problem. If anyone comes on the internet and says “I KNOW what’s causing your problem, you NEED to do “THIS” we should all stop listening to that person. And yes, I had a very similar experience with a Mallory (optical) distributor and locking the timing helped me diagnose a bad xr700 box. I’m not suggesting he should run it locked for anything more than testing.

inertia said
Yet he is still running those plugs, does that suggest a novice .
The original post states "plugs are rich", is that how YOU read them ?

As to the plugs, they look like ****. But trying to “read” a plug that is oil fouled or has been in an engine with long idle times, or lots of no load situations is a fools exercise. Your experience should have taught you that. I can get a plug to fire at 9:1 AFR with 15 pounds of boost on top WHILE spraying it with methanol. And if you read back a few posts you’ll notice I suggested sticking a new set of plugs in it very early on. And there ain’t no way in hell detonation is going to blow it up locked at 32 going for a test drive.
Now back to our regular scheduled programming.