Base timing. Really ?

To answer your question: yes, you should always run a vacuum advance unless it's a pure race car that only operates at idle and WOT. For a strip-only car it's one more thing to stick or malfunction.

Depending on the size of your cam, it may not have enough vacuum at idle to pull in the can. And a lot of idle advance will make the rpm drop in gear worse.

More advance and proper carb tuning (including setting the idle mixture screws) will help clean up that stinky idle. My [email protected] doesn't stink (much) :p but I have a four-speed so rpm drop in gear isn't an issue.

Big cams do like richer idle mixtures though, especially with automatics that put a load on the engine when engaged... how loose is your converter again?