I purchased the car about a month ago and drove it home ,150 mile trip, at idle the car was hard to start and wouldn't stay running and the smell of gas was real strong , but on the highwat it ran great. carb screws wouldn't stay in adjustment ,float hanging up so I put a new Edelbrock 650 on it, problem solved but the car was still very hard to start , a couple of times it wouldn't start at all , like it wasn't getting fire ,so I checked the points and they looked worn so I changed them , set on 15 , no luck , still hard to start so I changed the coil, and ballast resistor , car cranks but runs like crap. So I put the old parts back on but the problems still there ,I think something is shorting out, I had a problem with the brake and tail light but that was a wire pulled loose from the brake light switch. as far as the timing goes, it doesn't seem to make a difference if the vaccum hose is plugged or not when I try to set the timing ,theres a marker on the engine with 5 marks on it ,one in center has 10 stamped on it with a mark on each side and the next 2 have 0 stamped on them ,when it runs best the mark on the damper is way below the last point on marker ,( is this retarding or advancing ) , so I really don't know what the number would be without guessing at it .Guy I bought the car from said he adjusted the valves just before I bought it but I doubt it because the bolts don't look like they've been off in a while but the valves are nice and quiet. Could it be a problem in the ignition switch causing the coil not to fire, the reason I say this is because the way the Tach started acting all of a sudden, THANKS for the input