I FOUND THE ISSUE!
so I was checking on a few things. Started with ignition advance. It's at 5* advance at 800rpm, and climbs almost to 20. so vacuum advance works.
I replaced my leaky bypass hose with 2 properly sized hoses and blocked them off with bolts.
Then as I was finishing up and filling it up with water, I decided to put some concentrate coolant in it, because sometimes it has additional cooling properties. With the engine running I noticed it puffing up out of the radiator... for some reason I NEVER saw this with just water.. sure enough, it's puffing A LOT and it was very hot air coming out of there.
So there we have it: a blown head gasket!
Picture 2 shows one of the puffs.
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