With finally being able to work the throttle from in the seat I noticed a couple things. One, the manifold pressure gauge was actually dead. It was stuck at about 10 inches of mercury and didn't react when blipping the throttle. Two the voltage gauge goes bananas when the car is revved with or without the alternator turned on.
The gauge I was able to take apart and get working as it's a mechanical gauge. The return spring for the needle was bent and dragging on the bar that holds the needle keeping it stuck. Unbending that allowed the needle to move freely and return but it returned to about 5 inches of mercury. The vacuum tube has a brass elbow soldered to the end of it which is linked to the needle mechanism by a plastic link, this elbow can be bent to adjust zero so that's what I did. I'm honest not too concerned with the vacuum side but I was able to verify readings on the pressure side with a hand pump. The vacuum side reads slightly low but that isn't really a concern. I did marr up the ring on my otherwise brand new gaunge though.
The voltage reading is more problematic as I'm guessing the voltage regulator in the alternator is toast. Double checked with a volt/ohm meter and it's not the gauge the voltage on the car goes screwy. Like bouncing to full field and back screwy. Unsurprisingly the AFR doesn't like this and it's reading goes fluttery too. I need to do more digging to see what I can get by with in the mean time, bouncing off 17 volts clearly isn't good for things. With no water in the engine yet though I've hit my limit of run time for a while though.
The one slight bit of forward progress for the morning is I finally put bolts in the shift cover. It wasn't my best work back then so the bolts aren't spaced well. I didn't leave enough of a flange with the bead roller way back when so the nutserts went the only place they could go which leaves the bolts too close to the edge of the cover to be esthetically pleasing. Certainly isn't getting changed now though so it'll do just fine.
