First time post. I feel like an *&(& . I just picked up a 350 from a guy that has a few nice cars , so I thought it would be a good deal. Cutting to the problem.. I can't get the timing set. It will start ( great if the weather is warm) but its hard to. With the vacume advance unplugged the mark on the balancer is at 11 o'clock . When I try to pull it back it dies. I have checked the centrifical weight and they are not stuck. The balancer on the engine looks to be the same as a spare I have . I mean I held the two up and look at the key ways and the timing marks and they appear to be the same , ruling out a slipped balancer. Then there is a pop in the drivers side exhaust that sounds more like wires and plugs then a sticking valve. I have even made a hard launch and had some ping. So I know the timing off. Would the little model in the distributer have an effect on this problem. It has an hei stock dist. accell wires...any help would be welcome