Mild 318 pinging

Ping update. I tore into the distributor and put the factory long spring back in place and also added a little tension with the perch. Once I got in there, I discovered that I had actually replaced the long loop spring with one of unknown origin that was lighter tension than the factory primary spring. Therefore, the curve from idle up to 2200 rpm ended up basically the same. I think I see now why it's recommended to weld the inside of the slots rather than the outside so the springs start out with a little more tension. The curve now has a linear increase from 25* at 2200 rpm up to max advance of 30* at 3000 rpm. Max advance was occurring at 2600 rpm before. I ended up having to live with 8 initial timing for now as I still was having some slight pinging at wot. I've made several wot runs from about 25mph up to 65mph in 2nd gear with no audible ping. I also adjusted the vacuum advance to pull in 2 degrees less timing at 16" vacuum which ended up being 1 1/4 turn ccw. I figure I could probably bump the initial timing at least a couple degrees if I ever get a 3.23 rear. Hopefully, this saga will help someone else in the future. Thanks again for all of the suggestions and help.