i wish you had come to the oreillys where i worked, i probably could have rebuilt your carb in the time it took you to drink your coffee at the gas station, anyways if your getting fuel and spark, it souds to me like you are getting one hell of a vacumm leak through one of your 400 plus hoses, removing the smog equipment and rebuilding your carb would be a good weekend project and would certianly help to elimante your problem, if it didnt totally eliminate your problem it would certianly eliminate one huge variable in your equation, if its a 79 with l20b then you have the newer type smog manifolds with heat riser, unless you want to keep the heat riser i would go ahead and get a different manifold while you are removing the smog crap, take into account the exhaust flange is totally different so you will either have to make a new flange and have it welded on or buy one with your manifold and have it welded on as well, as far as emissions you can take basically everything off the right side of the motor and only replace the manifolds and the carb, you need 2 vacumm hoses hooked up to your intake one for your brake booster and one off of your carb for your vacumm advance, everything else either goes or is blocked off, try to elimnate the hoses down to where they connect to metal (plugging hoses with screws or bolts is unacceptable and will most certianly make it run worse) take a few pics of your carb and all that surrounds it, post it and get back with us, i will give you a part nummber for carb kit if you need it, its not hard to rebuild