Electronic ignition issue

Ok guys I am a little uneasy with the way this distributor is sitting and I played a little more to see how the engine would respond. As i brought forward above in this post I had to advance the distributor more than it was prior to my issue. I had advanced things to where the vacuum advance was tight against the #8 intake runner. Sounded not to bad and throttle response a tad perkier. But I shut it down and it ran on so I think to much advance. So now I am thinking maybe the springs for vacuum advance are weak and or broken. Or the pickup is not set to correspond with the reluctor. After playing with the open distributor and going tdc the pick up was not on the set point of the reluctor. Rather it was between 2 points. Now I visualize where the pickup is and the relationship to how much I had to rotate the distributor and feel the reluctor and pickup need to correspond with tdc and #1.Therefore the pickup may have to be reset to mach #1..I have got the pdf file on how to install this electronic distributor and looking at the diagram seem to see a difference in how mine is now. Could I be on the right track with one or both of my thoughts. Thanks Jeff