The other day me and my friend put a timing light up onto the car (making sure the blu connector was jumped) and saw that the car was badly off timing. So we turned the dizzy as needed and got the red mark lined up to the arrow on the timing cover. Then we took it on a test drive and sounds started to appear. There was a tremondous amount of pinging sounds coming from the engine and it was loud. My friend sad he heard it from a little ways up the road when I was driving. So I knew the car shouldn't be doing this, so we timed it back to where it was before and it doesn't ping anymore. So what the hell could be up with this? It's off now and running great, but when correctly timed it's runs like crap. My dad even timed it for us and it did the same thing.

But one more thing eludes us. On top of the dizzy, there is a mark scratched into into from the moveable part to the in place part where it slides. The marks are lined up now with the cars timing off. Am I missing something here?

 

I would check the cam timing..

Someone might have got it off a tooth
and retarded/advanced the ignition timing to compensate for it..

 

the marks scratched into it are from a previous owner.. they were smart enough to mark where the timing was set correctly... are u sure you are checking the proper timing mark.. there are 2 marks on the pulley