ignition timing woes

[aga]

I saw a couple of relevant threads but they were like 4 years old and thought i'd not raise them from the dead.... anyway

i've had problems with not being able to run enough ignition advance as i would like since i bought the car. investigating into the matter everything pointed to the head, either wrong cam timing or the head skimmed too much. i bought everything in order to swap out my head, but first i had to check the cam timing.

sure enough, the cam timing was out on one cam, but the colored links on the chain couldnt be trusted, as we believe it wasnt in it's place on the crank gear.

so finally we tuned it with the help of a schematic that was counting the chain links (i think it's tomei's)

anyway , after that we adjusted the ignition timing. the car has a power fc Ljetro... in other FC's there's a button that locks timing on idle but it seems these ones don't. so i turned the timing to 15 on the map and using an extra spark cable on the 1st cylinder, we adjusted the timing.

[ fact: before we finalised the cam timing, we had made a mistake, and the ignition timing wouldnt sit right .we thought the CAS was placed wrongly so my mechanic, against my say so, took it out, turned it by a tooth, and reinstalled it. i kept telling him lets take out the rocker cover so we can see what we're doing, but he wouldnt have it. after 3-4 tries, the timing wouldnt sit right so we figured the cam is not right , and opened it up and corrected it for the final time. while doing so , he had the CAS cap off, and he might have touched the disk, i dont know how forcefully. could he have damaged it? ]

as a double-check, i then turned ignition to 10 degrees. the timing light, showed -5 degrees. then i turned it to 25-30, it showed 10 degrees. wtf

i took the car out, and it was all over the place. once bogging down, after a few seconds running ok, then bogging down.

could it be a faulty CAS? could the cas be damaged by his hand? i'm getting really fed up with this car. sorry for the long post guys.

i've found a cas for sale a couple of towns away, tomorrow i'm going to a dyno guy who's a real knowledgeable person ...if we dont figure out whats wrong, im gonna buy another CAS and try it.