When we were putting in the distributor on my car we put it in off a tooth or two... We compensated by rotating the cap and checked the timing and got it to 6 degrees, but the fact remains it's off teeth.

Will this cause any change in performance or running of the engine?

I did notice my MPG is like 11 at the moment, but I am trying to knock it down to what the problem is, and the distributor might be one such thing...

 

If you were able to rotate the distributor and achieve 6*BTDC, then there is no issues with iut, other than pulling the wires around.

 

Agreed.

Is that all you did? Simply pull the distributor out and then put it back? Did you work on any other part of the vehicle? I'm only asking to get a little more info to help diagnose.

 

Well we were actually doing an intake manifold gasket swap. While my stuff was off I also polished and painted some stuff, changed the valve covers, etc.

The thing is, we marked off where we put the distributor, but I had to move the car (rolled it) so I guess the teeth inside moved. So when we put the distributor back in to where we had marked it, it did not fit properly.

I checked the timing and it was like 49 degrees advanced!

So we just moved the cap around to compensate, put the wires in the correct position, and the car ran beautifully for the most part. We checked the timing and it was 6 degrees advanced.

But lately my car has been eating alot more gas than usual, so...

 

It shouldn't be a timing issue if the only problem is using more gas. I'd guess at a vacuum leak more than anything else knowing that you had the intake manifold off...

 

Not sure about the gas mileage bit, but I've found that a common misconception is that you have to have the dizzy in on the right tooth.

Not true... you can put the distributor in, at any angle.... as long as when the #1 piston is about to fire, the #1 spark plug wiring is where the rotor is. Which means you can put the dizzy in anywhere, it's the plug wires that matter in relation to the rotor.

 

Being "off a tooth" is a misnomer, all it does is possibly cause the distributor to not be able to be twisted far enough to get the timing set. Either the plug wires won't let it or the connectors on the cap run into things.