OK guys, here's where I'm at now with this (formerly) dead VW:
After going through everything from air cleaner to intake, repairing what little I could find wrong, replacing all suspect vac hoses, and fixing one vacuum leak, I got it where I could drive it - barely. It's obviously running way lean, because once I get the throttle into the WOT enrichment, it wakes up immediately. I know the rice-rocket shop turned the fuel distributor adjustment screw a bunch, not knowing what they were doing. My question is, does that have an effect on the basic running mixture (as opposed to idle only)? Can I expect to crank the 3mm adjustment screw a little at a time and bring the mixture into a drivable range? I know the correct way to do this is with an ammeter reading the o2 sensor circuit, but the o2 sensor does not get hot enough to operate for this purpose. Remember this is a race car, and most people racing these effectively bypass the o2 sensor and treat it as a straight CIS system.