timing retard for starting

I plugged in a reverse polarity pick-up, one time. It had different color-coded leads on it.I paid it no attention. I ball-parked the initial,fired it up, and finalized the idle timing with the light. Great I thought;back in action. So I wanted to check the all-in power-timing. Oh-oh, no can do. The engine started all kinds of shennanigans, from popping, farting, and running like ,well, you know what. It started this almost as soon as the Rs went up and just got worse. So since the light was still connected, I pulled the trigger. What I saw, I had never seen before, and it only took a msec to figure it out. The light was cutting in and out as the timing was jumping all over the place. Ok, so I goofed on the reluctor gap was my next thought. But nope it was right on. I cranked some more gap into it,just to be sure, with no better results.
So then I remembered seeing a little jumper in my stuff-pile, and noticed the colors and ends were the same as the original pick-up. I always wondered where I had got that item. Sure enough it was a polarity inverter! So I plugged it in and hit the key.
Oh-oh, no can do. Now its doing a different dance. So I tugged on the Vcan, and hit it again. Shazzam! I put the light on her and set the powertiming back where it belonged, and continued on my merry way. Later when I got home(this was a roadside repair), I swapped that pick-up for a correctly colored one, and mothballed that odd fellow.
I believe I mighta bin still running the Orange box when this took place. There were all kinds of thoughts running through my head, when the engine died. But I had planned ahead, and spare parts are always in the boot. Apparently the Orange box and the odd-fellow don't make good bedfellows. heehee.
As I've been writing this, I've been trying to remember how far the initial was out with the flipped polarity item. But it's not coming to me. I do remember it was a lot tho.