Hi,
I justgot a 1984 F-250 with a 351 Windsor, automatic transmission, 2 wheel drive. I am trying to set the ignition timing with no luck. With the vacuum hose pulled off the vacuum advance diaphram and plugged, whenever I try to set the timing to 8 degrees BTDC, the engine dies and will not resart until I turn the distributor back to where it was. It appears that the timing has to be extremely retarded to get it to run. And it does run fine with the timing that way (retarded) except at highway speeds, the engine cuts out and sputters until I slow down and it clears up, then when I speed up, it does it again. I have rebuilt the carburetor and reset the idle mixture and speed (about 600 rpm) to get 19" HG of manifold vacuum at idle. The idle mixture screws are about 3 turns out. Can someone help me get my timing set to the correct setting? Do I have a distributor problem?

Thanks,
dbonnell