Progress! Well, I went through all the connections (again) and cleaned them. Went ahead and added fresh plugs plus I replaced the coil. All seemed well. I drove it short distances for a couple days without issue then after a longer trip it refused to start while hot. I discovered I had no spark, a couple bubbas took interest (gotta love south Georgia!), one wound up being an excellent junkyard mechanic. He identified some wear in my distributor that I would have never noticed and concluded that it was shorting out and overheating the modulator. Pulled the slightly melted modulator and switched it for an old one he happened to have in his rig and she fired right up. So I limped home and ordered up a whole new distributor assembly. Looking forward to getting that in to see how she goes. Then I'll tackle the throttle lag issues. Thanks so much for the help gang!