To advance the timing do you (if your looking at the distributor) turn clockwise or counterclockwise. Also what does this do for your car??

 

umm.. get a timing gun.

Advancing your timing will not do much for you but give you bad gas mileage. You might get some power, but nothing worth while.

Timing is set depending where the rotor hits the contacts on your distributor cap (among other things). Turning these contacts causes the rotor to send spark down the wires at different times.

Time it when you need to tune it.