That would make sense based on how the car was when we bought it. When we first got it home, we found it was running almost 30 degrees of static timing. We have since changed that to 18 degrees static, and had noticed that the engine's response to throttle was a little "lazy". We just accepted that, as all the other tuning parameters seemed OK, and engine compression was good at 150 across the board. The PO had installed the electronic ignition, and I guess got the two reluctor wires backward, and then bumped the timing to get it to run acceptably. We never checked that wiring because the car was running, and I had assumed it would not run at all if the wiring was reversed. When we installed an HEI conversion a few weeks ago, we simply duplicated the existing connection. Considering how far off the phasing probably is, I'm amazed how well it runs..... Learn something new everyday. Guess its not true what they say about old dogs......