1990 johnson 70 h.p outboard problems

I own a 1990 Johnson 70 h.p outboard on a 15 ft skeeter bass boat. my problems started with it being a VRO and the pump was bad and already was removed with a regular fuel pump on it and I just premix my fuel. that seems to work fine now. I just previously bought this motor and I installed it on my boat myself. my main issue started when I took it out and I had lost fire to one cylinder. I trouble shooted it to being either a bad power pack, stator or trigger so I bought a new power pack. I installed it and that fixed it. I started having fire on all 3 cylinders again I ran it and it seemed to run good I had to make some adjustments on the idling. well as I ran it on plane for a little while I came to a fishing spot I shut it off and fished well then I went to refire the motor to move spots and all it would do is turn over and come to find out no fire on no cylinders so I pondered what now. I checked connections everything seemed good I lifted ground on power pack and reset it and it got fire back but then it did it again so I had to troll all the way back to shore. I took it home thinking it was a ground issue well ran it a few times and made sure it had a good ground and tried it again the next day and it did it again!.im puzzled I even thought the power pack was defected so I even put the old one back on and still no fire with it. I researched the timer base could be the issue. I haven't pulled the flywheel yet. I reinstalled new power pack now and tried it again at home in a barrel and now I have fire again! I did spray wd40 on the stator and timer base. don't know if that helped it to gain its fire back though. my question is what is the arrow on the lever from the timer base link for? is that where it should point on the carb linkage? I have adjusted it a lot and wonder did I cause this issue? what is the proper way to adjust the throttle linkages and timer base? any help with this i would greatly appreciate it. thanks!