I will try to make this as short as possible the reason I asked is I apparently set my timing wrong last weekend after resetting the initial in the distributor. I didn't rev the engine past the multispark on the msd (using a real acient timing light that is self powered by the #1 plug wire only) it had alot of scatter spark. When I got home I rechecked (thanks to sixpackguts help pointing this out)and reved it past 4000 rpms and bam the scatter was gone and best I could tell the timing was at 50 deg btdc right then. So I set dist up to go fully in early on (one spring on the counterweights) and reset the timing to 35 total. And was just curious as to how much power I had lost at the track because of the timing issue. I know that it was real bad to have the timing that far advanced and I am very new at this level of racing so don't beat me up to bad for my lack of knowledge. By the way thanks for the replies they were all easy to understand.