boogerschnot

You may just need to clean up the balancer with a wire brush to see the markings

Rat fink

Get under the car with a wire brush and have someone turn the engine over, by had, until you see the timing marks, Clean the area good and take some whiteout and put on the damper wear the timing is that you want. Make sure you have the timing light hooked to Number 1 spark plug and fire it up again.
no change in RPM after remove the vacuum line is a different issue, Probably the centrifugal advance is broke/not working.

66 tang

What is a centrifugal Advance? I know what the vaccum advance is, sorry I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to tuning engines.

gjz30075

They are a set of small weights inside the distributor that are connected to the plate with the points. As the engine accelerates, the weights move outward, (centrifugal force) and move the plate with the points to advance the timing.

Rat fink

What GJZ said
Here’s a picture of your centrifugal advance. It's under the plate that your points sit on. Take that plate off and see if the 2 little springs are still attached.

66 tang

Hmm, last winter when I changed the the cap and rotor the springs felt fine. So I checked the timing, set the idle at 800 rpm and disconnected the vaccum line and plugged it, and the timing was at about 5 degrees before top dead center, also put new plugs in today, what do you guys think? Advance it?

PaulS

You can't just advance your timing until you know where its at.
Just a thought here but you are running an air gap manifold - if there is no manifold heat then you are likely to get a bog when accelerating and a bigger cam will make it even worse. I suspect that the issues you have can be tuned out but you will be just hiding the root problem.

66 tang

My timing is at 5 degrees B.T.C. And I've felt the manifold while it's running and it seems warm, I don't know what heat it's ideally supposed to be at, and the cam isn't very aggresive, so I've been told

kalli

check on the timing again with vacuum disconnected.
you say you are at around 5degrees BTDC. slowly rev the engine (higher and higher) and see:
a) does the timing change (it should advance more and more)
b) at what rpm does it max out and what is the timing at that point (what is max advance rpm and timing)

the accellerator pump: if misadjusted it will bog every time you pres the pedal. But once you have the foot down and keep it down it doesn't do anything anymore. So I don't think that's your problem.