OK it's running decent now, but the vacuum advance is pointing toward the front of the engine, rather than the driver's side valve cover like usual. Vacuum advance hose wasn't long enough so I ran it without it. Its dark now so I'll mess with it more tomorrow.

With the old distributor, I could not get the motor to ping. I could advance the timing to a certain point and it would be running decent, but if I tried to advance it further to get it to ping, it would start surging and not as much power. At first I used stock advance springs and then I tried replacing the thick spring with a Mr Gasket thin spring, same problem either way. Any ideas what was wrong with that stock unit?