Zach - the SD is designed so that vac drops immediately to zero as soon as you hit the accelerator pedal; car does not need to be in motion. I assume his CD is just like the SD. The car should upshift quite smoothly with no vac and you can test it by driving around with the vac line unhooked. The only thing you should notice is clunky downshifts.

You only need vac for a downshift. If you unhook the vac line from the vcv and tee in a Mityvac to the tranny, you can drive with zero vac and test upshifts and you can pump up the Mityvac (ie provide vac to the tranny) before coming to a stop to test for smooth downshifts.

In short:

upshift - smooth with zero vac
downshift - clunky with zero vac but smooth with vac

Of course I am assuming the SD rules apply to the CD.