ignition question, confused really

[tonyscustomrides]

so on my 81 c10, the idle has always been rough since i bought it. it shakes and smells like its burning really rich. so today i bought the idle adjustment tool for the quadra-jet carb, and i started to mess with it. no luck, so next thing, i checked the timing, the timing mark was behind the marker about an inch and half. Then i noticed the distributor was was really angled towards the front of the truck (the plug in on the left side faced very far forward) so i compared it to my 77 chevy and its almost parallel with the firewall. So then i checked the position of each spark plug wire on the distributor cap, and they are all back (clockwise) one position. so number one cylinder is actually on number 8. so i moved them all to the correct position, rotated the distributor to the correct location and the engine doesnt even crank over, so i moved them back to how it was and it runs, but has the rough idle and when you rotate the distributor to get it in the correct spot, it totaley dies.is any of this normal for the wires to be plugged in like that and that much rotation on the distributor? does this mean the engine is pretty worn out and someone messed with the timing like that so it would run? sorry for the long question.