Unfortunately a dyno probably wouldn't teach me much. I'm thick, so a qualified person would need to show, and teach me, before I could grasp anything. As far as timing by MSD's set up. In my case it had to be changed. Because when we got the 1st intake manifold 4 or 5 years ago, it was unknowingly cracked under the plenum by a pipe fitting, and had a vacuum leak. I was alone doing this, and couldn't get it to idle well at all. when I shut the engine down, it ran on. Out of panic, and frustration, I touched stuff I shouldn't have, having zero knowledge of what I was doing.A friend of mine reset stuff up, because I was bitching like a little girl, and tweaked a few thing, as if to say " I was here." And it runs good now I have tens of thousands of miles on it.
I remember these guys coming into a shop I worked at. They would race A Body cars at Englishtown in stock classes. These rules are supposed to dictate that if you have, " say " a 360 LA, with 8.8:1 compression, and a given lift on the cam, you were supposed to abide by that. A lot of the new guys ( who didn't know how to cheat ) played by those rules. and they still broke into the 11 seconds. A 1975 360 only makes 245 BHP. Over hearing people talking they would blueprint the engine to the max allowable spec, and than mess with cam duration, cam and spark timing to build cylinder pressure. At the same time they needed to avoid detonation. The jeep guys do the same thing sort of. Because of the poor combustion chamber in the 4.0, the engine detonates with a very low static compression. So they play with different timing, and temperature equalization tricks to try to get the most for off roading. Even though Jeep 4.0 only has say 320 lbs torque. they get the curve very broad, like off idle to 4800. That's what Ray was saying optimize. If you know about the stuff I'm writing, than you're way ahead of me, and you know I'm leaving out a lot of the ingredient, just by simply being novice.