On the subject of ignition timing for older vehicles one thing often forgotten or overlooked is the difference between leaded (back in the day) and unleaded (current fuels), these burn at differing rates and therefore need different timings. Back in the transitional period early 90s many cars would have 2 scratched marks on the dizzy body for one or the other and you would set it to whatever you had just banged in the tank, without this the cars would start smartly but pull weak under acceleration like handbrake was partly on. you can get round this by setting the timing by the book and using fuel additives to correct the octane or you can advance the timing to suit the modern fuel as follows.
Set your timing as set out in the manual and start the car, turn up the tickover screw a little and then slacken off the dizzy retainer nut, rotating the dizzy the wrong way will cause if to falter and splutter, turn it the other way and the revs will rise, go too far and it drops off again, find the sweet spot and retighten the dizzy retainer. Back the tickover down till the engine hold a base tickover and then blip the throttle to make sure there are no flat spots and also take it from tickover with a gradual rise in revs listening again for any flat spots, once happy with it job done, timing set for modern fuel, make sure you have fresh fuel in the tank, you will notice a difference when driving it will pull smartly. Check your sparkplug in the following weeks, look for signs of a weak or hot mix, which may indicate the timing and or other is not right.
