The fuel tank should not be under pressure, unless the charcoal canister is clogged up. Add a new charcoal canister to your list (Autozone VC120). Steep inclines could cause a fuel pickup issue if you are nearly empty so it wouldn't hurt to fill it up with fresh fuel.
If the transmission fluid is halfway up the dipstick (between the high and low marks) that's where it should be, but if it's truly half full (meaning way below the low mark) then don't drive it at all.
The accelerator cable adjustment details are all in the FSM, be sure to get those dialed in. It would have to be an almost vertical hill if you could only 20-30mph wide open.
During these troubleshooting efforts you want to minimize all of the unnecessary variables so you can focus on what needs to be resolved. Things like low fluids, low fuel, bad charcoal canister, etc.. should all be solved first since they are the easiest. For the test drive pick an easy loop around town, it doesn't need to be the steepest hill you can find. I think you are on the home stretch.
VC120 should come today, kept meaning to rehab my old one but never got around to it, oh well will keep it anyways. Transmission fluid was in between cold and hot marks so definitely well below, I drained it all and refilled. Maybe be slightly overfilled now, will have to drive it around for longer to really tell, but I'll take that over underfilled any day.
I filled it up with gas, took it around and watched the OBD reader this time. Drives pretty smoothly, only thing I don't like is sounds like a knocking from the engine a bit and I think timing is still off, it can be a bit shaky a couple times every minute. On OBD reader I was watching HP just to see if power was actually an issue, I got up to 80HP (dunno how accurate it is) going up to 30MPH so I don't think power is really an issue, guessing it was a gas issue.
I think I really have three outstanding things:
- smoke still comes out, back to not smelling 100% like oil, and I think coolant level is dropping. Worried about the outcome of this one, I want to really verify that coolant is significantly dropping before I assume the worst
- is OBD #1 timing accurate? at idle it was going between 4 and 5 degrees, so a little high, but while driving it went well above that - is 3 degrees only at idle, and it varies while driving, or is that not normal?
- negative ground terminal crackles when I connect it, even saw a bit of smoke once. It still drains about 0.2V/day, assuming both are probably caused by some short somewhere else?