1988 Firebird TBI 305

Have been having idle problems. Replaced IAC. Still persisted. Starter ended up busting apart. Replaced it. Checked timing, it had jumped while installing heater hoses since the clamp wasn't tight -- but hadn't expected it. Car ran well. Sat for 3 days. Didn't start again. Found the ignition coil arcing over to the driver side fuel line. Replaced the coil. Still idled horribly and would stutter when revved. The firing order was fine. Ended up unplugging a single tan/black stripe (brown/black stripe), and actually got the car to start. Timed the car, but only get it to 12 degrees because I can't rotate the distributor cap since the harness bumps the ignition coil. Without that wire connected, the car runs and idles. But with it plugged up, it acts like it dropped a valve and backfires through the TBI and the exhaust pops and cracks.

Why would that Brown or Tan and Black stripe wire destroy the timing?
Also, only a few of the distributor towers are firing yellow arcs to the sparkplug wires when hovering them over it. Explaination of that?

 

That wire is the bypass wire. When unplugged it stops the ecm from controlling the timing. When it is plugged in the SA table in the ecm is controlling the timing.

Possible solutions are to do some tuning on the SA table or rotate the dist 90* so you can adjust it further. Simply move your plug wires one spot in the direction you are trying to turn it and rotate entire dist 90* the opposite direction. This might give you more room to make adjustment.

 

Figured I should do that tomorrow. But how would I adjust the table with a car that has an old school OBD?