I have converted from point to electronic ignition. I am wondering what I should set my timing at. Also, which cylinder is the #1 cylinder to hook my timing light up to on a 302?
i have a question i put a HEI distributor on my 351w ever since ive had it on there i can't get it to run quite right. i set the timing to 10 but it didn't do very well at high rpm 3500+ under load. so i advanced it to 14 which did better but i did all this with the vacuum advance on ported vacuum. then today i saw a tuning atricle on the net and it said to hook it up to manifold vacuum so i did that and it seemed to work even better at high rpm but my idle was really rough. so i turned the dist. so it would idle the best only now it cuts out at WOT 3500+rpm
Manifold vac would increase your idle timing. This should raise the RPMs and smooth out the idle. Manifold VS Ported ONLY affects the timing at idle. What is your total at idle and your total at 3500?
i don't know what the timing is now cause i don't have a timing light with me. but with an chevy HEI should i have the vac hose hooked to manifold or ported? i know with my old inline 250 it goes to ported. but i didn't know if the chevys were suppose to go to the manifold. i didn't know if the vacuum was holding the retarded timing till you hit the gas then vacuum would go away and advance timing?
ok i'll check it when i can. what do you recommend for base timing? and should i set base with the vac hose plugged in or not plugged in?
Set it to 10 with Vac unplugged. Adjust from there. The more timing you can get out of it without detonation, the more power it will make. It really depends on the spring curve of your dist.
You are going to have to get more in-depth than that to really get it running right. You are going to have to check the mechanical advance and see how much that is as well. Depending on what they distributor was set up for it may have way too much or too little mechanical advance. This is a pretty good article on timing and it helps to explain how the different aspects of it. http://www.fordmuscle.com/archives/2000/03/timing/ Read it and all of the side bars as well. Then come back here and ask questions and some of the guys here will surely help you Once you get the right combo of Initial advance, mechanical advance and vacuum if you use it you will get more out of the engine. There is a lot of HP and quick response lost by not setting up the proper ignition curve in an engine clint
