[jku72]

It does not matter a bit if the distributor is one tooth off. All you have to do is rotate the distributor and then it will be in line. There is no set tooth location. I think either they are pulling your leg or they don't know, or are confusing the cam timing with distributor timing.
My car also did not have the timing marks even close, and it did stall also when I disconnected the vacuum advance. I then manually advanced the timing by a little, so that the engine would run. I used a dial back to zero timing light and found I had 31 degrees intial. Yes, it can run like that at idle. In fact it runs faster with massive initial advance at idle. With the engine now running, I slowly retarded the timing, and when the engine slowed too much, I increased idle speed, and so on, until I got to 15 degrees initial.
It is interesting to note that the first time I did it, the engine was so far advanced that I saw no timing light at all, until I ran my advance dial way up.
As one other person noted, it is possible that the distributor will hit the manifold or firewall if it is way out like this. In this case you can either lift out the distributor a little to disengage the teeth and rotate the dist. shaft, or, you can just shift the spark plug wires over one hole. Just be sure to go the right way, and keep the order correct.
On the other hand, the CAM can be off one tooth and cause havoc like this too. But the distributor does not care what tooth it lines up with.
Not all vacuum ports are used. On some cars I use manifold vacuum, and other I use ported. It really depends on what your idle speed turns out to be. Experiment, which ever one seems to work best, use. You can just plug the one your not using. Timing is set with the vacuum disconnected always. Usually when I set my initial correctly, and do all my other tuning, the last thing I do is vacuum advance, then it's like I said, whatever works best as to the port. NEVER reset initial timing based on what the vacuum advance does. When I did my pontiac, I connected the vacuum advance to manifold vacuum and my idle speed went up to 1000 rpm. So I connected it to ported vacuum, and hardly altered the idle speed at all, but for cruising I get the advance I need. Entire books have been written on this. It takes that much to fully understand the dynamics involved, I think.

[WINGNUT]

Thanks for the replies. No, I never lifted the distributor out of the block, I only replaced the cap, rotor, condenser, and points. The timing chain is about 7 years old.

Is the 'Dial back to Zero' timing light the one with the dial on the end? If so I do have one, I bought it over the winter but never used it. I was using the non adjustable type this time, same as last time.

I was going to post a question about how to use the adjustable light since I'm not really sure how it works. But since it was brought up, how do these work, and when do you use them?

[LPete]

Originally Posted by WINGNUT

I was going to post a question about how to use the adjustable light since I'm not really sure how it works. But since it was brought up, how do these work, and when do you use them?

You turn the knob until the mark on the balancer is lined up with the "0" mark on the timing cover, then read the advance on the dial on the light. The advantage is that you can measure timing when it's off the scale on the timing cover.