In general vacuum advance helps with mileage, emissions, and starting on street engines. You can run fine without it as long as you have a distributor that you can tune the mechanical advance on.

In general BBC's with no vacuum advance like about 12 deg initial and a fairly aggressive ramp to 34-36 all in by 3000 rpm. I could believe there are those that like 8 deg initial as well. In general w/o vacuum advance you run as much initial as you (and your starter) can tolerate.

Will it hurt anything? I don't think so as long as there is no detonation due to being too far advanced and you have a decent starter. 8 deg initial should be easy on starter.

Kitz