At this point, Mattax, I am definitely attending the school of "trial and error" engineering!
You know what they say about an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters: Eventually they make it to the drag strip.
If that school of engineering was good enough for old Henry Ford (it was), I guess it will have to be good enough for me. As a side benefit, I sure am getting good at removing the distributor, making changes, and re-installing it.