Stalls in Gear, Automatic- Restarts Good- Can Slam it into Gear! EEEK

Phreakish said
Mine didn't.. Between two burnt plug wires, a terrible carb setup, and timing locked out at 35 degrees, it would drop 600+ rpm, and would quit with the idle any lower than ~1200. Coming to a stop would often kill it without two footing it. After addressing those issues (but before going efi), it would idle anywhere I wanted and drop ~100 going into gear. Nothing wrong with the converter.

While the converter isn't ruled out, it still sounds like there's enough unknowns and other issues that there's no definitive problem. If it is the converter, then when coming to a stop it would feel and act like a manual car brought to a stop without pushing in the clutch, which is a tough thing to try to describe. But coming to a stop real slow like could help identify it.

Heck, a video would probably do wonders to help pin things down. Doing the youtube account thing isn't that bad and could help clear things up fast..

Thing is now that the timing is at 12 my vacuum dropped to 15. So no stall in gear, burns rubber, idle now struggles with it turned all the way in-up. Before idle would run smooth at 20 vacuum , who knows how high timing. Fuel 5 psi. Compression 145 across.

What do you think about this information I found?

"Now; to find and set the total timing all you need to do is set the dial on your timing light to 36. Now rev your engine up to about 3,500 RPM (to insure that the mechanical weights are fully activated) and watch your timing mark on the harmonic balancer. Now rotate your distributor until the marks line-up at "0" on the crank. When it reads "0", (yet the light is set at 36), you have a total timing of 36 degrees. Make sure you do this with your vacuum advance NOT hooked-up. If you don't run a vacuum advance, then don't do anything, just leave everything as it is and tighten it down and you're good to go. Your engine isn't really at "0" or Top Dead Center. The timing light is offsetting the light beam by 36 degrees, so you should be reading "0" on the crank".