Why do they call it "68 advance curve"?
In post#7 I put up a chart, a bit hard to read, sorry, that shows the advance details of various distributor versions. The '68' refers to 1936 model Fords. The consensus of majority of people on here, is that the 11A advance is most desireable on account of it having more advance. My finding is that with a high compression engine, such as yours, this particular advance comes on too fast, and too soon, leading to the detonation you're experiencing. Using this setup, sure, you can retard the whole distributor, so you don't get to the 24 degrees, but the whole kaboodle is retarded, and the engine will be 'flat' at lower revs. Using the 68 advance, you'll end up with less total advance, but a more favourable curve throughout the rev range. When you get your distributor back from Michael, please post your results...I'm sure you'll be happy.