At my wit's end

Got the engine to run over finally today. Has the float spring and the HEI stuff installed.Took a lot of pedal pumping to get it to fire but then once it burned off the excess gas it idled pretty fine. I dropped it into gear and it idled fine there too. I let it idle for awhile and after maybe 7 minutes it died. Looked like it was flooding the carb so I adjusted the air/fuel mix screw anf tried again. Seemed to last about the same time before dying. I adjusted a couple more things and it seemed to be idling better so I decided to take a short drive down the street. I realized as soon as I hit the gas pedal that the timing is way off as it just sound terrible as I pressed the gas. It would go, but not fast, and sounded like crap. Need to get a timing light to adjust things. Hopefully that's it.