vacuum gauge to solve idle issue

Got time after our grandson Knox's 2nd birthday to tackle this. I re-marked the balancer to get TDC marked more accurately. Not sure whether the balancer had slipped or not. I marked it in a way so that I can tell if it slips or not in the future.
It now has 40* of timing (30BTC and 10 ATC) on the balancer itself.
I also got a rebuilt distributor (11R on vac arm) from Ray/HalifaxHops. Thanks Ray! Drop in and go!
So armed with Vac gauge and timing light I spent some time on it. I believe there is room for improvement(there always is right?)
Idle in park 750 rpm, idle in gear 600. Seems low but I didn't wanna mess with idle screw and mess up the Tport sync from AJ
Vacuum was approx. 13.5" on choke port @ idle.
Vacuum was 4"@ distributor port on carb(pass side) Should be a lot closer to zero correct? Which would mean adjusting the Tport sync? Or is there another way?
Now the timing 14* @ 750 rpm
23*@2000 rpm
"All in" Distributor unhooked and plugged. I checked twice. 1st was 27*@ 2800 rpm. 2nd check was 29*@ 3000 rpm
With distributor hooked back up 28*@ 2000 rpm
Total timing(same as all in but with vac hooked up correct??) 45* @ 3000 rpm.
Do these numbers make sense?
The car doesn't seem to start as easy as it did before. As well the "in gear" idle seems low, so bump up the initial?
Vac reading of 4" on ported vac, should be zero?
Thanks all.