on my 350/auto/2 barrel, I have always set the dwell using the non-meter method "turn until it mis-fires and then back a half turn" as described in the pontiac shop manual.

In other words I have never known the actual degrees of dwell angle

Last night I bought a Actron meter from Autozone.
I hooked it up and I had 20 degrees of dwell.
So I adjusted it to 30 degrees as per the pontiac shop manual( all V8's) , and it idled like crap, stalled and would not restart.
So I turned the adjustment back and the car started and seemed to run best at about 21 degrees.

Is the meter wrong or is some other thing (plug gap, timing chain slack, valve lash) out of adjustment

The thing you have to remember is the timing changes when you adjust the dwell. So increasing the dwell advances the timing (Or retards??)and will affect the way the motor is running. You need to set the dwell to the spec, then adjust the timing. You have to do it in that order.

I put in a pertronics electronic conversion. you cant even tell from the outside its converted. electronic ignitions is one of the best things to come along to increase reliability .

I second that. And the best thing is the timing never changes once you set it. With points, as things wear, the dwell changes and so does the timing.

Bob S., I took your advice and set the advance way up, and was then able to get the dwell set to 30 degrees.
I then set the advance down to like 11 or 12 degrees.

For some reason, there seems to be more seat of the pants acceleration.

Thanks for the help