I think you have a slipping timing mark on the vibration dampener. Get a piston stop tool and find out exactly where TDC currently is in relation to your timing mark.

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

Read-up on distributor recurving... because...
More over-all performance is in there, waiting to be "unleashed" with some carefull distributor work.

Basically, if you decrease the amount of total mechanical advance by 10 degrees, you can re-adjust the initial timing to 5 degrees BTDC (+ 10 degrees) to get a little better off-idle and low rpm performance... with-out higher RPM pinging.

And yes... confirm that the timing mark is correct, before starting any distributor recurving work.
DD

Thanks guys. A distributor recurve is in the plans. I am going to get a piston stop tool and find TDC first and proceed from there!