I made significant headway towards a reliable truck today. Yesterday, while working on some of the very many wiring problems in the engine bay, I noticed my distributor was easily swiveling 25-30 degrees after the softest of touches. I had farmed out installation of the TFI (which was the final puzzle piece that overcame the truck and my "no spark/no start" problem fresh from purchase date, as in same day) as I didn't trust myself not to mess up the timing. Well, I guess I just payed the shop do it for me.
You see, I readjusted the timing today, as per several suggested methods, and it worked out well. Mostly. I ended up with a very solid, steady 10 degree mark hanging out at the indicator, but nothing gold can stay, they say. I basically have a few questions:

1) Is it common not to have a SPOUT module, but instead a push in jumper that connects yellow wires? (picture of jumper below.
2) Is it common for a vehicle to not only run at a different timing with said jumper in place, but run significantly worse?
3) Will there be catastrophic results from running sans SPOUT?
4) How many lines do you see here... Could someone translate the randomly appearing second timing mark (in my case a white line) flickering closer to 0 degrees, and also at times another solid timing mark hanging out in tandem with the expected mark but a few degrees off (before, or towards 0 degrees) 10 degrees advanced?

Not to look the proverbial horse in it's mouth, the truck is running better now than at anytime in the short time I've owned it, no stalling, no bucking or racing, better and more predictable acceleration, and the AOD is reacting in kind (RPMs?) If anyone needs, I'll pull codes and check fuel and vacuum etc. tomorrow. I was just wondering if these are common problems, symptoms of operator errors that are obvious to more experienced members. I've got some ideas, but yours are better. Thanks a great deal for any ideas or help you might send my way.

 

The jumper that is not the SPOUT

 

That is the spout connector on the '87 and a few years after, until the TFI was moved from the distributor. It may be the same on the later models, as I haven't seen those yet.

What engine do you have? You may be timing off the wrong mark.

 

There should be one. Make sure your trigger is only on #1 and not close to any other plug wires.
You may have cross fire happening if your cap/wires are old.
Could be a cheap timing light.

 

Thanks for responding
87 F150 5.0 EFI AOD 2WD
I dropped my distributor straight to :

10 III 0 III 10 III 20 III 30

The center of the second 10

Then fine adjusted with the timing light.

 

Yes, it is cheap I will admit and inductive cross talk is a possibility. Thank you, I'll try isolating it better.

 

Watch this video to make sure you're timing it right.