After you get all this done and get your dist close, you'll still need to time the motor by ear. Do you have good advance and retard? That is can you move the dist back and forth enough to make the motor stumble? Sounds like you are gettin' closer, now you just need to fine tune it. It's tough without a light but you can do it.

First, after stabbing the dist, make sure you have good motion on it. Advance it until it starts to stumble, then retard it til it starts to stumble. A good starting point to try and run it is going to be right in between those 2 points. In the end you will probably be more advanced than retarded, but we'll get there. In this first part, I want you to make sure that there is a point in between advance and retard where it runs fairly smooth. If not, you're probably a tooth off on the dist. Decide which side of the motion it runs best at and move it on tooth on the gear that direction.

Second, go through first again. Do this until you have a good sweep of motion on the dist, that is you can advance it until it tries to die, AND, you can retard it until it tries to die.

Once you have reached this point, it's just a matter of dialing it in. The harmonic balancer on my 350 has slipped so I don't have a timing mark either. What I do is find the stumble points, advance and retard, and split the difference, then split the difference again on the advance side. When you have too much advance the engine will turn hard, like the starters draggin'. Back off your timing advance until that quits. That is a pretty good startin' place. You may have to adjust a bit for different performance, but it's not tough. Do a little adjustment, then go drive it. If it starts breakin' up at higher rpm's you've probably still got too much advance, but keep tweekin' it. You'll get it.