My 440 died yesterday, and I would like to avoid throwing parts at it

My question would be, what caused the timing to "go off"? If you were driving it, and it just died, how do you explain it? One possibility is that you slipped the timing chain. To determine this, I think you need a more accurate determination of TDC than the thumb method. Go ahead and pull the valve cover. Turn the crank over to get the timing mark at zero. Observe the valve positions on #1 (you may have to go around twice). One tooth on the chain isn't that many degrees, but it's valve timing, not ignition timing (although the distributor is driven off the cam, as well, so it will be off by the same amount, but it's the fact that the valves are mis-timed to the crank that is the real problem — you could always adjust the distributor).