Got kind of a weird issue. I bought a car a few weeks ago that has a pretty mild Goodwrench LM1 350 in it (old owner told me it was a 355 but I haven't verified it yet). It's nothing special... shit 624 heads, Holley 650 4brl, HEI ignition. Long story short, I was checking into a issue with it running rich all of a sudden just to find a piece of an o-ring in the secondary float. While I was screwing around with that I decided to verify the timing. I brought it up to TDC on #1 compression stroke. Timing tabs lined up with crank marks, but the distributor rotor was pointing more near the #8 post instead of the number #1. The car actually ran ok for the most part with it that way, but with a shit ton of timing advance (no detonation though and probably because it was triggering the light early) and you could hear occasional fluttering through the exhaust at idle. I reset it so it would fire #1 at TDC, fire the car up and it runs like shit. I can get the timing to around 12* initial and 37* without the vac advance, but it runs bad. Sounds like it has a big ass cam in it. I roll the rotor back to where it was and it runs somewhat ok again. I was screwing around with it again today and the distributor stopped giving spark. Found it is a bad module.
Any ideas. I don't think this could have been from a bad module. Do I have to pull the timing chain cover to make sure the cam and crank are in line? The #1 piston is at compression stroke TDC with the timing tabs at 0* TDC on the crank, and both intake and exhaust valves are fully closed on #1.