Jared,
Thanks. The way I figure it, it was running "OK" at one point with 0 filtration (I took the box off at one point to clean it). The intake honk was cooool.

So if I can even get it back to that level I'll be happy.
I have a vac synchronizer; it's the gauge type (mercury scares me). I figured out how I'm going to go about starting the synch process but it's been a drag noodling out the intake leak and then making the decision to spend the $60 on new boots. Was afraid I had mis-diagnosed an ignition problem or something. Thanks for the tip on the boneyard--I just hit them up for a quote on an airbox.