318 Idle Questions

Just joined and really happy to see that there is a wealth of info here.

My '68 Satellite 318 (no upgrades) has been giving me a crappy idle, but it's great at speed.

I hooked up my tach and have been trying to dial in the idle to 600 and then optimize the mixture. The mixture adjustments I have made haven't had consistent results. I figure this is because of the vacuum advance was still connected as I fiddled.

So I disconnected the vac advance hose. The RPMS drop to 250. No amount of idle adjustment will bring the RPMs back to 600. I have to pull the throttle 1/4 to 1/2 inch to get it up to 400.

I'm thinking I need to adjust timing before I am able to dial in the carb accurately. What do you think?

With the vac advance disconnected, I only have a limited amount of time before the car stalls and I can't start it again until it sits for a few hours.

(There are a lot of problems here, I'm sure, but I want to take it one step at a time)

Thanks for the advice.