Need some help with diagnosis

I looked inside dist. cap Looked good,
Take a real good look. Had a 340 car towed in.Guy tore the front off looking for a timing chain problem. Found all good. Guy lost confidence to put it back together. Long story short found the cap was cracked.My 2 cents.
the timing itself is retarded.
Another was as simple as the distributor hold down was just loose enough for the timing to back off over time.
Again, just a thought.