I tried the loose-exhaust trick but to no avail. It did make the truck sound a bit better though. The current exhaust is so quiet I can hardly hear when the truck is running, which makes starting a pain sometimes.
I pulled the vacuum advance line and gave it a pressure test via lungs and a finger to lug one end, and it holds pressure just fine. Looks like it's the advance unit itsself that is the issue. I'm looking for a replacement now.
After doing that I decided to go on a side-quest to find and decipher all of the engine numbers for the sake of fun (that is the main reason I bought the truck after all). Through the use of enough chemicals to reduce my lifespan by a few weeks I was able to clean all of the grease off of the engine casting number and S/N. I decided to pull the starter to check the CON number as well. I have all of the numbers now but have yet to decipher them. I'll look into it in the next couple of days.
Something I may have forgot to mention is the starter issue. For some reason the starter only actually catches about 35% of the time (And that's the IMPROVED percentage now that I've learned that it seems to like being pushed a certain way) so I always feel pretty trashy having to grind the flywheel 2 or 3 times in the parking lot before I can actually get the truck started.
Well, now that I have the starter off, I've decided that I'll pull it apart and give the internals a detailed inspection. I haven't gotten to that yet, but what I did notice is that there is alot of play in the shaft that holds the rotor and starter. I'm not sure what the allowable play is, but I'm getting 0.106 inches of play based on a quick measurement with some calipers. I'll have to do some research and figure out if that's giving me the issue.
