superpieboy,
The pointer is a sharp little nail located in the hole directly above the starter on the face of the bellhousing. The ball is a embedded BB in the back of the flywheel. As the engine runs, you can look through that hole and see the flywheel whizz by. If you had super pupils, you would spot the little ball as it passed through this 'viewing window'.
The ball, which is usually pretty dirty and needs to be cleaned up and highlighted with yellow marker or such, is the timing mark you align with the little nail/pointer hanging down.
This is all done with a timing light attached to number one plug wire. Rotating the distributor will parade that ball to be illuminated BEFORE or AFTER little pointer.
Screwing the idle fuel mixture screw IN will lean the idle out, eventually killing the engine. A ballpark setting is 1 1/2 turns OUT from all the way seated.
Most of your problems sound like a gunked up carburetor...maybe a stuck or sticking powervalve. Valves that are sticky will hang and cause a miss too. Fiddle with it some more, it sounds like you are pretty sharp on these things. Good luck.
Stuart
