You MAY have to do what we did back in the day at the garage I worked at as a head mechanic. Don't use the timing light.
Do what we called "Time It By Ear"
Take the distributor wrench with you and Take it out on the road. Loosen up the screw and advance the dist. a little and then get in and drive it. Did it get better or worse? If worse then Back it the other way. Did it get better that way? See if that will work for your getting more power. It is a guess by gosh and by driving it to see if it gets better. If not then go back and use the light.

With that age. the timing chain may have stretched some, timing gears are not as tight and have give in them, you have already said the dist has play in it, also the vacuum advance may not be advancing as much either as it gets worn, add all those things up and by using a Timing Light on it and getting the timing mark Right Where The Book says may not be the best.

[quote="simon says";6651927]''Sea Foam''? not heard of that.. [/quote]

[URL="http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sea-Foam-Motor-Treatment-16-oz/16664932"]Seafoam[/URL] it's gotten many lawnmowers and motorcycles with bad gas up and running without a carb teardown.

I will add my vote that sea foam is great stuff.

i swapped my 77 over to high energy the actual name escapes me right now. but i got more power from it i got it from rockauto.com i haul 8000 pound on a regular basis so the power helps. and i agree sea foam works better than anything i have ever used.

That Seafoam is good stuff.

I still can't believe the wonders it worked for my old truck.

Thanks Arabian Knight, it really is like that, its a by ear and eye vehicle very much so, but the specs give a fair guide,,
pretty new chain, but have had one slip on a Lincoln I had years ago,,

you guys got me sold on this sea foam stuff, Im no big fan of standard carb cleaner, thought its like lightening cleaning stuff,, some chemicals are just dandy, like wd-40 and marvel mystery oil cant hardly live without em...

Sounds like the transmission might be going south.
Since is sounds good sitting, but has problems with going up hills....
is what happened to me once. Didn't hear anything funny in the transmission either... it just won't go up hills well.

I would suggest you to revamp the complete timing of the engine. Set the timing, as it was earlier. I hope this would work for you.

Before you parked it, were you feeding it real gasoline?

What are you feeding it now?

Total advance should end up at 38 degrees so if 18 is all you're getting that is not enough. Try advancing the base timing by 5 or 10 degrees. It may make it harder to start but if the top end improves then it's time to have the distributor rebuilt. You could be running on only the vacumm advance and the mechanical isn't working or visaversa.

WWW

...............He flew the Coop ! He hasn't been here in almost 10 months ! , fordy:huh: