I replaced my balancer. I fired it up and wanted to check my timing. It was about 1140 at night and I noticed while the car was in fast idle with the choke enabled the headers were glowing a bit right at the heads. I shot my base which was 35 not including the vacuum advance after it warmed up(choke off). With the vacuum it was 50 something. It is weird but the car ran fine? I adjusted my base back to 20 and hooked the vacuum back up. It now read 45 or so(hei)??? The headers quit glowing I wonder if I should jet up a couple sizes or it was caused by to much advance. I then reved the motor to 3000 and shot my grand total. This was 53 or so and If I remember right that is ok for the grand total when you have base+mechanical+vacuum. I didn't unhook the vacuum and shoot the mechanical and will do that soon but I figured at 3000 the vacuum advance isn't a factor anyore so what the hey. I'm thinking it needs more mechanical and less vacuum advance? The car seems to like where it is at right now. It is running pretty good at a nice steady idle of 1000 which will slow a tad when the electric fan comes on but besides that it is running good. Any ideas or help.

The vacuum advance doesn't "go away" with increasing RPM. It only "goes away" when the vacuum drops; i.e., at WOT.

If the engine likes it, then it's right. Don't worry about the "numbers", or the mark, or any of that; if you can tune it for the motor to run the best, by highest mph and/or best ET, or highest HP or EGT on the dyno, or whatever, then that's where it needs to be, no matter what the numbers "seem" like.

In fact, I think you'll find, SBCs are conistent enough about wanting their total timing to be within such a narrow band for optimum results, usually 34-38° at high RPMs and low vacuum, that you can almost use that to check the accuracy of your marks.

There are a number of positions for the timing mark, at least 3 stock locations that I know of. Most likely, your balancer and your fixed timing mark, aren't agreeing on which mark they're set up for. You might want to put #1 at TDC and se where the mark is. You might find that it's WAY off.