The Vette has had a power problem since I finished it.  I noticed it when the car was initially started and it would smooth out after it got hot.  Well, to make a long story short after a friend of mine had it at his race shop and couldn't figure it out after tweaking the carb and timing several different times, I brought it home and had an idea.  The car felt like it was suffereing from vacuum loss.  We had sprayed WD40 around the intake and at the base of the carb, unhooked all of the vacuum pieces and still no luck.  I was beginning to think that either the carb was bad right out of the box or there was a vacuum leak under the manifold.  I plugged breather hole and PCV valve and put about 30 PSI of air into the block through the dipstick tube.  Guess what, I had air coming out through the carb.  So I had to remove the distributor, carb, drain the coolant and remove the intake.  There was a leak into the intake runners of cylinders 6 & 8.  There were traces of oil in the runners.  There was also gas in the oil.  I ran a compression check and all cylinders were between 140 and 150  that's still fine for an engine where the rings haven't seated yet.  I replaced the intake gaskets and used Permatex  "Right Stuff" around each port, torqued the manifold down and did the air test again.  It was now sealed.  You would think that everything was good to go.  Not so!!!  I put everything back together and while I was timing the engine, it quits running.  No spark.  I had 12 volts at the coil (Pertronix Flame Thrower).  I removed the distirbutor and replaced the Flamethrower module with an old one that I had from another car.  Put the distriubutor back in and then fired it up.  It ran for a few minutes and quit again.  It turns out that although the coil tests within specs, it has a short in it and gives off a surge that fries the modules.  That was an expensive lesson.  So, now I am waiting for the arrival of an HEI with Tach drive that I will install this weekend and hopefully the string of bad luck will come to a close and we can enjoy the rest of the summer cruising.