Don’t worry about the condition of your plugs right now, because it seems your timing is f-ed up.
Here’s the thing, you can’t crank it over until the rotor points at #1 & assume you are at (or near) TDC, because you don’t know if your distributor is installed right. Similarly, you can’t crank it over until the pointer points to TDC on the damper & assume you are at (or near) TDC, because a) the damper goes around 4x for every compression cycle, and b) you don’t know if the timing chain is right. You have to follow the directions I gave you at 2-pm yesterday (in order) to figure out what you’ve got.
Leave the plugs out.
BY HAND (using a ratchet w/a socket on the bolt that holds the crank pulley on), because you have to be precise here, turn the engine over until you reach TDC on #1 cylinder (piston @ the top of it’s travel on the compression stroke (both valves closed). The article linked below describes a few ways to find TDC. https://dannysengineportal.com/top-dead-center-tdc-when-the-piston-is-at-the-top-of-its-stroke/
Once you are at TDC, tell us where the marks on the damper line up w/the pointer. If it lines up where you set the initial timing, then check the distributor using the step below
At TDC, the rotor should point to #1 cylinder - see my advice from yesterday if it does not.
If you have not moved the dizzy and it ran before I doubt that the timing is the issue. Not saying that the timing is correct, but you seem to say it ran ok with just a flat spot. Cars that sit around without running do not have good plug readings. Especially if you are starting it a lot and not driving it. Still feel that you have a vacuum leak somewhere or a poorly adjusted carb. Or a bad set of points or misadjusted points.
There are 5 pages on this thread of suggestions to help you. Please do not take offense to this, but go through all 5 pages and answer each suggestion one at a time in one post. This will help us a lot to help you!!
No offense taken. I appreciate everyone’s help. The car has been in the paint shop for some time and had a lot of cranks without getting up to temp. Just enough to move it. Definitely hard on plugs. I noticed the accelerator pump leak when I removed the air cleaner to check things suggested here further so that had to be fixed and I think that was part of the reason for the stumble. I also did the plugs on the passenger side, a cap and rotor. Still need to do drivers side but ran out of time. For whatever reason it seems to run much better and the idle is back where it should be. Also, I think when the engine was built they simply turned the crank to 10 and put the distributor in with it pointing toward cylinder 1 so timing is 10 BTDC. Car doesn’t have points. Pertronix.
Been poking around as new guy on the forum and saw this thread.
Assuming it’s electronic ignition now, or at least properly adjusted and good points and condenser, what I would do if this came in would be to disconnect and plug the vacuum advance, and then set total timing to 36 degrees, a good total timing for an FE with iron or Edelbrock heads. If it’s a stock distributor, it could take some RPM to get there, so keep going up could be as high as 3500-3700 rpm before it stops advancing depending on who was in the distributor over the years
Then, check initial at idle, with a light too, no eyeballing, get a number, then you know what initial you need to get the correct total.
After that, adjust the carb for best idle. Vacuum gauge or by ear, I do it by ear, but have been doing it a LONG time. You should be somewhere near 1 1/8 turns out from bottom, if you aren’t within a 1/4 turn from that, or if the carb doesn’t react, then you need to dig a little deeper in carb tuning, but get the ignition out of the way first and see how close you are