How nasty were the ports when you had the intake off? Maybe you had some of the crud get down between a valve and seat holding the valve open? If it were just stumbling (no noise) I would suspect too much egr flow rate choking off the engine due to either a stuck open egr valve or stopped turbine..OR you got your vacuum lines hooked up wrong and your egr valve is stuck at 100% open all the time. When you have the valve cover off next, see if all the followers are riding on the cam lobes. If you have one sitting low you may have a dead lifter or a dropped valve.
I tried to hold the egr valve open/closed manually while trying to start it.. no change..
wont even idle now.. whole car shakes violently...
as far as vacuum lines, there isnt too many there and the only ones I took off was to the actuator on the flapper thing (which I assume goes to the egr stuff) still figuring out names...
I am wondering if the IP is on the way out as I have never heard the lift pump run in the tank... note that I have had this car for 2 weeks and have been reading up a lot of threads trying to find similar stories etc to point me in directions to look...
Now its a matter of just towing it somewhere and having a person who KNOWS these cars do their thing..
I owned a shop but was never a trained tech.. self taught on most things but have never dived into internal stuff.. never thought it was a good idea to experiment on a customers car haha just to learn.. and never had the need till now on any of my cars to tear into things majorly...
suspension, brakes, custom exhaust, tune ups, swapping parts, welding and machining are my skill set... not engine building or electrical so I am stumped..
I pushed it out of my workshop, pushed in the honda and have started the engine swap with that so I can have at least one of the commuters running instead of driving the plow truck everyday from jordan to the UofM (40m trip each way)
if anyone in my neck of the woods wants to drop by I have a workshop and some beer.. just need opinions.. then I can make decisions...
I have the tools for the most part to do a lot of things.. just not enough knowledge....