The outer ring on the pulley/balancer has slipped. You only think that it is 17 degrees advanced when it really is retarded. Try this. Make a piston stop from a old spark plug, put in the number one spark plug hole. Pull the other plugs out, disconnect the battery for safety. Turn the engine BY HAND til the piston hits the stop. Mark the place on the balancer, turn it backwards til it hits the stop and mark it again. In the middle of the two lines is TDC. Not perfect but close. Put the plugs back In and time the car with the new TDC mark and see how it runs. If the factory mark is not real close replace the balancer. Jay 6155
I set the timing up a couple more degrees and went for a nice long drive. Ran very well, still low power, only a single small backfire. Tried a friend's timing light, it seemed like I was still set high, but not as high as the HF light. But his light didn't have the advance feature. Considering my HF light may have been defective (the timing on my '32 was also best run higher than anybody else's), so I bought a nice expensive Bosch digital light. Turns out the HF wasn't that far off, a couple of degrees at most. I was running at 20 BTDC, which is too high. So I backed it off to 15.5 BTDC and the backfires are back. I need to run 18 BTDC to prevent the backfires. Of course, if the outer ring has slipped, it's all funny business. I haven't checked that yet.
But I also bought some carb cleaner and tried to spray all the gaskets. Somewhere around the center intake manifold if I hit it just right, the idle RPMs drop. If I squirt from a direction where I can really see what I'm doing, no drop. I tried tightening up everything, same result. I think it's a vacuum leak.
I'll bump the timing back up to prevent the backfires and just hold tight for another two months until I pull the engine. I'll do the diagnostics then. I was going to try loosening the valves, but what's the point on dinking with it any further. It's a busy couple of months, I won't get to drive it much anyways.
Thanks everyone for your help!
Mark
