A bee bee in my distributor vacuum advance hose

Before firing up my engine for the first time I thought I would blow through the distributor advance vacuum hose. So using my mouth I tried to blow through it and nothing. So I tried to stick one of those red straws you use on WD40 cans to see what's stuck in there and that's when I found a bee bee wedged about and inch and a half into one side.

Now I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I will venture out and take a wild guess that it's not supposed to be there. I couldn't get it out, so I had to cut a piece of the hose off, here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Please tell me I am right and it's not supposed to be in there?

I have no idea why its there.

Someone used it to block vacuum for some reason, whether they re-curved the dizzy so that they didn't want vacuum advance, or to block it while setting the timing or something. Regardless, it's not supposed to be there. Never under-estimate the levels of stupidity that previous owners are capable of.

I thought it might be sabotage.

Over the years I have had service shops sabatoge my car. The plan is that you will come back to the shop with a new problem and they can charge you again to fix the new problem they created . Here is a few of the tricks . I am sure there are others.
1. unscrew a spark plug to the last thread . No compression in that cylinder so engine runs rough but cannot see a problem from the outside.
2. cut a slit in a vacuum hose on the bottom of the hose in an area hard to see from the top of the engine compartment. Creates a vacuum leak and engine runs rough. Hard to find unless you know exactly where to look.
3. set the float level too high on the carb. Everytime you stop at a stop light the gas pours into the carb flooding the engine and stalling.
And now a BB in the vacuum advance line. Impossible to find and something you would never look for normally.

So you're thinking the wife had something to do with this? LOL, jk

I think it's probably from a shop or the previous owner that didn't understand how to adjust the vacuum advance. I've seen shops do it.

Never heard of a shop doing it, but I have seen a lot of owners that don't understand it bypass it. They don't understand that the curve and base timing levels are all designed around the advance.

Actually, I was thinking about a guy I knew in high school who exploited the non-locking hood on my mustang to oh-so-humorously rendering it inoperable by taking the distributor rotor. I think he was jealous. On the plus side, I used that trick myself when leaving the car in my Mom's garage and not wanting my sisters to borrow it.

That said, someone disabling the advance because they don't know any better is probably more plausible, especially given the larger sample size of experience by folks like 10secgoal.

Yeah, but there are shop owners around here that don't know too much either.

im not exactly sure what the exact reason is that people do this. but i have seen it many times.. on modded cars... not as a shop screwing with it...

Now, now, don't you know that sharing is caring? lol