Thanks yall!
I've been moving into a new house which means that my Rover is both my workhorse and that I haven't had any time to dig in to the issues. It has made for a little bit of a stressful week driving back and forth between houses and hoping this thing keeps running.
I fiddled with the timing a bit and —perhaps coincidently —the rev/stall cycle has gone away.
I still have the most persisting issue which is when I first depress the gas, the engine wants to stall. I have to floor it and get the engine revving to keep it from stalling out. I took the air filter off and opened the throttle manually at the carb. At that early moment (when the gas would be initially depressed), I hear a massive sucking sound and the engine tries to die. If I go past that point, it revs back up.
I have a mostly useless vacuum gauge on my dash and it seems to be living in the "poor" range on the dial rather than the normal drive or idle. That said, I'm not sure we should take that to mean anything.
Lastly, I remember this happening 10-15 years ago and I'm fairly sure the culprit was points and condenser. I'm inclined to start there since it is the cheapest thing to test
If I go the route of checking fuel pressure and vacuum, what's the best approach? Assume those are separate instruments?