First, the advance and retard marks are on there by virtue of it being an aftermarket performance chain set. Just because you could advance or retard the cam doesn't mean it's a good idea, especailly for a novice.

Advancing the cam lowers the rpm point for the engine's torque peak. Retarding the cam raises it. This is due directly to how advancing or retarding the cam changes the intake valve's closing point. It's a tuning issue that very experienced performance builders use to shift the torque curve to enhance the behavior of the car. If the car is loosing traction easily off the line, the cam can be retarded to kill some low-end torque a pick up some rpm on the top end. Or the cam can be advanced to take advantage of traction conditions to improve a 60-foot time but with a reduction in top-end power.

But the difference is pretty insignificant with a cam with very short duration.

And just so this doesn't get confused...these alternative timing marks have little to nothing to do with degreeing a cam unless the cam is precisely two degrees off one way or the other.

Travis thanks for the responce. I have been using a local alternator starter place. The starter has been juiced up and I have showed him the wear pattern and asked for sugestions. I believe the problem is deeper than that. I have a friend that runs a 390 and his fly wheel is the same as mine except I have more teeth on my starter ring. His is 153 and mine is 183 maybe they sold me the wrong starter ring I asked for a 1972 ford f150 with a 390 stick. My steel fly wheel had the 183 teeth count also but it never sounded right eighter. I do have the spacer between the block and the bell housing. Whith both fly wheels one steel and one aluminum the starter after veery little use wants to lossen up.

I currently have a set C8AE-H heads with 2.09 int and 1.65 exh and didn't know if the C3ae's would be worthy of installing on my 390. Any gains expected?

Thanks, thats what I needed.

is there nothing i can do to these to make them work properly?

Pressure is nice about 7 to 8 psi. However you could have a fuel pump which is inadequate (possibly) or a fuel filter which is restrictive (most likely), or even too small fuel lines anywhere from tank to carb (so the experts say, but I havn't had any trouble with lines smaller than 1/2". About those 600's though. The ONLY difference is to the idle circuit as the idle adj is for fine tuning only. Two carbs give off twice the fuel they should at idle with the mixture screws in the normal position, but will run OK, but still rich in the fully closed position. The progressive linkage neeeds to be set up correctly and make sure the carbs are monted in the right position as the belcranks are different front vs back carb. If the fuel supply turns out to be OK, sounds like your driveability is in the accel pumps or possibly the vacumn advance. Are the vacumn advance connected together for synchronous secondary operation? If you use regualr carbs, you can drill and tap and add fittings to the vacumn chamber caps and add a balance tube. As far as the accel pumps go, check the colour of the cam and make sure both are the same and the nominal type (I forget that colour, but any Holley book will tell you that) and the 50cc pumps are a better bet than the smaller ones if you use an after market HP cam. Maybe the spring rates should be changed, but this hasn't had much affect in my experience.