Well, I got readings by hooking to the coil as indicated by the dwell meter's instructions, so I suppose that the dwell may be way off now if it wasn't reading correctly. I also discovered yesterday that the vacuum retard on the distributor was only working sporadically when I set the timing, so that may have affected things as well. I'll poke around and see if I can find a thread on checking the dwell, then I'll reset it to spec and set the timing per the manual with the vacuum on (5 degrees ATDC, which seems odd, but I suppose it's right). It's still running like crap, so it probably won't make it any worse.....

If I get the dwell and timing perfect again and it still runs badly, I'm thinking I might just go ahead and take it in.

Just to be sure: there's no need to make any adjustments to or "set" the EFI points, is there? It seemed to me it was just an "install as delivered" part. I'd hate to spend tons of time on the ignition timing and find out the EFI points were out of adjustment....