That doesn't surprise me--I was tweaking my distributor curve and was pulling up on the shaft to see if the pesky little circlip snapped into its grove--it had not, so the shaft pulled up. Not thinking, I finished putting the distributor together and put it in the truck. I started it up, timed it, and took it for a test drive. Whoa Nelly--not the performance I wanted it to have. Surging, bucking, generally running poorly, but it DID run.
After I gave my head a giant yank (out of my butt) I realized that I had pulled the mechanical advance governor free of the advance weight pins--I had a distributor shaft that spun easily 90 degrees prior to any advance occuring, and please note that the "advance" was whatever randomness occured. That damn thing ran, not well, but it ran. I drove it home, yanked the distributor out, re-assembled it correctly and re-installed it. Runs like a champ when assembled as designed.
I had great fun telling my wife to bump the starter while I had my finger over the #1 spark plug hole finding TDC. She mostly stammered something like "you have your finger in the engine and you want me to do what?" She just doesn't get it....
