Old, New guy, with Old Problems

[ChevyTech]

You're welcome and I am glad you arte making progress.

Your distributor is worn. The shaft should not wiggle.

It needs a distributor, but if it still has spark, don't worry about that until you find out what other problems there are.

The timing should be set with the engine at idle. Warm up the engine first. If everything is right it will idle with the set timng wire uplugged, but most of them will just barely idle when trying to setthe timing. When you plug the set timing wire back together the timing should advance at least 12 degrees.

There should be a trouble code stored in the ECM from have the set timing wire unplugged. You can test your knoweldge by seeing if you can read the code without a scan tool.