The vacuum advance hose is plugged into the drivers side which according to the edelbrock book is for non emission controlled engines and the pass. side is for emission controlled, shouldn't mine be drivers side?
I think they're a bit misguided. Any engine since '66 could be considered a "smog controlled" engine. And even during the height of the seventies learning curve some engines ran on full vacuum, while others ran on ported vacuum.
And besides, they don't know whether or not the end user has all the smog equipment connected still or not. So I think it's a misleading way to describe how to connect a vacuum advance.
Got it started and if I pull the collapsed pcv carb line it dies immediately and if II pull the vacuum advance line it stutters hard.
Normal. Pulling the PCV hose is a huge vacuum leak and without knowing how everything else is tuned, it could run rough, idle could go up, or it could go down, or it could just die. Pretty normal behavior.
Pulling the advance hose suddenly lowers your timing drastically, which causes the engine speed to go down, and your vacuum leak is big enough to make things run rough. A bad combination even if you put your finger over the hose to stop the leak.
If I pull the pcv valve out while still connected to the carb from the valve cover the motor stumbles and dies.
As mentioned, this is one of the normal reactions. In pulling it out of the grommet, or pulling the hose off of the carb, you're creating a huge vacuum leak.
If the engine is already running too rich, you might actually see an increase in your idle. But more often than not the vacuum leak is just too much and the engine will get rough and die. Often it will just keep running, but not well.
I'm going to try a heavier duty hose today as well as a new valve.
Must be an old hose already to be collapsing under minimal vacuum. I wonder if the PCV is clogged at all anyway? Or maybe just the hose is deteriorating internally and the vacuum is too much for it. How does it look on the outside?
Does it make a difference on whether it's hooked up to the spacer or the carb?
Nope. Not as long as it's on one of the 3/8" barbs and not a small one. As long as the carb base or spacer, it's sucking from the full intake plenum, so that's fine. Just never connect one to a port on a single runner.
Your Edelbrock carb probably has one on the front and on the back with a plug in it already.
Also when I plug everything for initial timing should I plug the other end going to the vacuum advance distributor line and the carb end.
Easiest is to disconnect the hose at the distributor and simply plug the hose end. We used to carry golf tees in our tool boxes as a means of capping off vacuum lines. A small screw will do nicely as well.
As mentioned there's no need to plug both ends, or go to the trouble of capping the distributor.
One thing about ported vacuum though. At idle it's not supposed to have any vacuum signal at all. So unplugging the hose is just a careful best practice. But when all is well, should not be necessary. It's a practice mainly for those that use full vacuum.
It's a useful test though, when the timing light is connected. If you see your timing change when you connect the hose, your carburetor is not adjusted properly.
Granted, you can usually feel the vacuum with your finger tip. But if it's very subtle it's hard to tell by hand sometimes. But the timing light rarely lies.
Paul