Timing gurus chime in!

[Jersthecool]

So when I did my headgasket I obviously had to do my timing. When we pulled the head off I didn't know there was darker spots so I just colored the spots on the chain that the 2 holes on the cams sat on. When reassembling it I put it on exactly the same way making sure the crank was at tdc and the 2 sharpied in dots line up exactly with the cams. The car ran perfect before so putting it back exactly the same it had to be right. However when installing the CAS I didn't know it had to be stabbed in a certain way so that you have adjustment on both sides, I thought as long at the dots lined up it was good.

So down the road when I finally try to start it, it would start and idle for about 2 seconds and die and smelled like heavy gas, so I pulled the cover off and "re-did" the timing. I then realized there were 2 dark chain links and 1 yellow one so I instantly thought to follow those and after rotating the crank 100 times they never lined up the closest they would get was 1 link off. That was when I determined the chain was off the crank one link. So stupid me, being frustrated, and super tired working at 2 in the morning trying to get it working thought for some reason "the chain had to be right and needed to match up or it wouldn't work".

So for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to rotate the crank clockwise a bit (it's now off completely off from where the dotted marks on the pulley where tdc one is) and voila with the cams at 10 and 12 oclock the 2 dark spots lined up. I then figured out the CAS needed to be stabbed right and it lined up perfectly and had equal adjustment on both sides and the cams lined up perfectly with the chain so I thought all was good even though it wasn't at tdc. So it starts up perfect and idles good but backfired a little more then it used to.

Then it seemed slower than I remember it the year before but I thought I might just be more used to it, the boost lag was also horrendous not reaching full boost until around 5k on a 2871r and when I pulled the plugs a couple times they were really white as if it were running lean which I couldn't understand because it ran rich and backfired quite a bit and definitely went through gas. I ignored that and thought it ran fine, just thinking it had a boost leak somewhere.

So I'm thinking the chain was originally timed right because the marks I made were good, just the CAS wasn't timed right so it wouldn't stay running then when I changed it, it wasn't timed properly but managed to run. Now I'm wondering does this seem correct and that I should change it back before it comes out of storage and is it even possible for it to run as well as it did with it being off an entire tooth??

Any insight is appreciated.