Yanking hard at idle???

Welp you hit the nail on the head. I was able to coax my idle down and sure enough it goes into gear without me having to have the brake mashed to the floor.

I have it at a hair over 20 degrees initial, that sounds crazy high no?

I’m going to have to play with my dizzy now to make sure it doesn’t shoot to the moon at wot

Not crazy at all. I run 17/35 all in at 3500 on mine. I've run as high as 24 degrees initial with 34 total. If you have trouble with the starter you can run a start retard and pull 20 degrees out of it for start up.