When you start opening and closing valves too early or too late. You said it's retarded now. For simplicity's sake, lets just "say" it's four degrees retarded......from zero. That means it's EIGHT DEGREES away from where the cam card says. Understand? I've seen one TWELVE DEGREES retarded from zero lined up dot to dot, so throw dot to dot out the window. It means nothing without a degree wheel. I'm not saying yours is that far out, I have no idea. But you also "don't know" where it "IS", either. So there's that. Until you get the wheel on it, there's just no telling.