I'm spent... need some ignition advise.

You didn't tell us the voltage at coil+ yet. If you don't have a multimeter, get one (free w/ HF coupon) or take to a shop and pay $$$. I looked at a guy's car recently when it was idling poorly and it also wouldn't flash reliably with my clamp-on timing light. I measured only 6 V at coil+ (should be ~9 V w/ a ballast), so guessed a weak spark. When it does it, try running a jumper wire to put a full 12 V on coil+, but only for 1 min. The reason it dies under throttle is that it is harder for the spark to jump the gap at higher cylinder pressure.

I suspect that 84 didn't have a ballast resistor, so should have a full 12 V at coil+. They did all that in the "spark computer", so hard to change. If you want to control spark yourself, buy a $45 "ready-to-run" distributor on ebay (Steve White Performance and others). It has built-in HEI module and uses the traditional centrifugal weights and vacuum advance.