You need to remove the vacuum advance at the dizzy capsule and plug it, not just pull it off from the carb stubs (i'm guessing twin carb from everything else you've said) as that will introduce air leaks into the inlet manifold making the mixture leaner and hence needing a bit more retard to run correctly.
As has been nicely pointed out above by 142 Guy, you need to set the dwell angle first and then static time it or the timing could be a long way out and you won't be able to pull it in from there without problems. If memory serves, the dwell is 50 deg and the timing is 15 BTDC at idle (without vacuum) but i may be wrong on that - fairly certain the dwell is correct but the exact figure for the timing eludes me. You may well find that by setting the dwell correctly, the dynamic timing moves to where it should be.
