Not only am I new to this forum, but I am also new to working on old vehicles, let alone a Y-block. Some back story of my truck. Before my father passed a few years ago, he started the restoration of his '59 F-100 with a 292. He took the motor to a local engine shop and had them do a complete rebuild of the block and heads. From what I know, ha had them replace all the original internals with new of the same spec. The only thing I do know is that he had them put in a "mild" cam, but I don't have the specs on it right now. When he got the engibe back, he replaced the old 2 brl intake and carb for a stock "A" code 4 brl intake and a Holley 600 cfm (I know its bigger then needed but it's what dad bought) and installed a set of headers. The only thing that has been changed since this is I installed a Mummert aluminum intake and my brother switched it over to electronic ignition. We are trying to put the finishing touches on the truck and have ran into a fairly big issue in regards to the timing. We tried setting the initial timing using vacuum first but could only manage to get about 12 on the gauge at idle (@650 rpm). When we put the timing light on it to check where we were, it was about 42° advance. We know that this is way off, but are struggling to figure out why. We verrified TDC for #1 cylinder and checked the rotor position on the distributor and it was good, so we are pretty sure the distributor is in correctly. I know very little about distributors but the rotor seemed very loose. I am not sure how much rotational play there should be in the rotor. I also know that the cam timing is set on this engine using the 3 'oclock method with 12 pins between the marks. I think that if this was off, the engine would not run at all so I am pretty sure this was done correctly also. I don't know anything about switching to electronic ignition, but is there anything that could ave been done wrong? It appears that the original distributor body was used in the switch.

I assume I have a lot of missing info to figure out what is going on, but hoping there are some Y-Block gurus out there that can point me in the right direction. Any and all assistance is greatly appreciated.