This is a continuation of my 164 issues:

I found a couple of huge vacuum leaks and fixed those up
and readjusted the idle and such. It turns out you really
need to tighten those carb bolts... Also I'm going to get
my spare intake/exhaust manifold skimmed and magnifluxed
and have its studs replaced and secondary butterflies welded
shut and replace the manifold when convenient.

About the distributor --

The timing marks are correct as nearly as I can tell --
the #1 piston stops moving up and starts moving down at
around zero on the harmonic balancer.

At 2 degrees of advance at 800rpm idle I get pinging
from 2000RPM on, and at 3000rpm sometimes with no load.
The distributor seems to get full advance (about 18 or
so degrees) at 1200rpm; this seems like a lot of advance
so early on. The car has always been somewhat ping happy
and now much more so than before. I set it to about 10
degrees of advance at 800rpm with the vacuum advance
attached to the manifold port; it still pings solid from
about 2500rpms up. Last time I checked the compression
they were between 135 and 125 at random across the whole
motor. The plugs are a little chalky but not melty or
fouled. Some were actually almost tan and the ridge
around the edge is a little sooty but not overly so. I
haven't cleaned them recently, though, and only put about
20 miles on the car since putting on the ZS carbs.

I've got 2 other distributors. One from a FI without
solid state ignition and the other from a 75 with the
magnetic pickup setup. I think I'm going to try the 75
this weekend.
chris