At the Cline Butte meet it was suggested that the distributor vac line to the manifold wasn't helping. So I removed it and capped it off.
It starts easy and drives great, but now where to set timing at idle (800 rpm)?
I'm at 12dgs btdc now but my greedy nature is pushing me to "give it a little more and see what happens"
How to tell when it's too much? pinging? overheating?   

The meet was fun and the diff damage was welded up and is working fine.

Ted
aka The Blackdog

Do we have to guess what you're adjusting the timing on?  Is there a prize if I guess correctly?

OK that was a little vague

1987 Suzuki Samurai manual transmission. no ac or power steering.
Modifications that may or may not affect timing:
EGR has been removed and blanked off, likewise the PCV.
The stock carburetor is long gone, it had a Weber when I bought it and has been converted to a Harley CV.

The distributor advance was attached to the manifold to get it's vacuum input.

Now I'm curious - can you say what disconnecting the vacuum advance was supposed to help with?

Vacuum advance is primarily an engine efficiency function, advancing the ignition timing to allow for "more complete" combustion is lean mixture, part throttle scenarios such as highway cruise.  You can disable it and run more base timing, how much more base timing will depend on what octane fuel you're willing to run, and yes, pre-ignition or pinking/pinging will be the result of over advancing the timing.

I had the vacuum can fail on a carbed Swift (same G13 as the Samurai but a different carb) and rather than replace the can, we locked out the vacuum advance and bumped up the base timing, back then we only had one octane available, premium, so the common practice was to bump the timing to make the best of what we had to pay for - it was too long ago (and too many vehicles) for me to remember clearly, but I remember running as much as 18 degrees of base timing, just not what vehicle it was

"What does it help with?"
  It seems to give better throttle responce at mid range.
 On my test hill (paved but steep and long) it can carry 2ND gear all the way up. That has been a way for me to tell if new equipment is "snake oil" or actually produces more torque. 
 Eric said that the manifold hook up for the vac hose didn't work well but there is no place on the Harley CV carb to attach to. Everything is still there so I can attach back to the manifold as a test.
 I do run premium. Have not done MPG yet, that is almost as important as power to me. If I carry more gas to extend range It's more weight, thus giving away some of the Samurai's superpower.
 The mission of the sammi is to get me from my driveway to explore places that I wouldn't take my AWD Astro van, so even if I use the vac adv sometimes and disconect it for other tasks (freeway/crawling) that's ok.
 Just where to set the base timing for each if anybody has done things this way.

This is my first Suzuki but back in the 1980's I had VWs (bug, van and ghia) and the mech only lightning whirlers always worked best.