340 has no balls

You need to tune it, as suggested. I would get the carb rebuild kit first. Carefully rebuild it or have it rebuilt. It may be very lean due to age and crud in the air bleeds. Also, the advance curve of the distributor needs to be tailored to the fuel we have today. That means more than sticking the Pertronix pickup assembly. It means setting the advance curve for best performance without pinging. Also, on the trans.. it is a surefire way to kill the transmission by driving it with a misadjusted kickdown linkage and manually shifting it. The reason it doesnt work is the aftermarket intake. So You may need to do a little tweaking to get it to work. It sounds like a simple case of lack of maintenance.