Poor idle and off-idle performance after distributor swap

AJ/FormS said
OOPs, I guess I shouldda asked.
But it looks like you are on the right track.

A for the short shaft, somebody may have put a washer or a bearing, inside the D under the weight-carrier, and or not punched the bushing down far enough. You might want to take it apart and see what can be done in there. After the shaft comes down, you will need to put some shims above the plastic pinned collar, to take up the slack, so it stays down.

If nothing else, you can shim the I-shaft up.

But I'm still confused; Did you not say that the oldsetup was doing the same thing?
But yes 5* of rotor travel, traceable directly to the I-shaft slot clearance, or the bronze gear on the cam, is a lot.
In my readings, the bronze gear requires it's own I-shaft, different from the regular I-shaft; IDK, as I have never run into that, just remember reading something to that effect.

The old setup was doing the same thing, but not as noticeable. The distributor shaft end on the old distributor was a little longer (0.020") and had sharper edges so I think it was engaging a little more, but still not fully.
Judging by the wear pattern on the helical gear on the I-shaft, shimming it up a tenth would not hurt anything, where do I find such a shim?

...And not to dismiss your carb, idle tuning advice, I did follow it when first given and the car idles very well now even with this timing issue. 0-60 is down to 6.2 even with timing pulled back. Car is on the verge of running absolutely awesome. I am going to print that post out and reference in the future. I have a 600 cfm Edelbrock that I will eventually install and tune. I think it may be a little more appropriate choice than the 500 that's on in.