hey jeff, ill give it a whirl. First off ya need an adjustable timing light. have someone sit in the car and rev the engine until the balancer stops moving, note the rpm.attach the light and have a friend hit the pedal at the rpm the balancer stops moving while you adjust the knob to this rpm.Its ok to rev it a lil higher to make sure total is all in, not ok to set total if advance is not all in.look at the number on the light, this is where total is coming in at,lets say ya want 36 degrees as an example,you want total timing, 36 degrees, to be all in at by 2000 rpm for a dual purpose car and around 1000 to 1200 in a race car. there shouldnt be any need to remove the springs,its time to test and tune the distributor by using lighter springs and stop buttons in your case. if ya dont have the buttons or springs give jegs a call and they will deliver next day. running the msd you should be able to get away with .060 gap on the plugs. engine should respond nicely, hope this helps.