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Timing Experts needed!

G

gwstang

Member
:rant Okay, this is about the '56 cheby in my sig pic. I still need help here even if it is the cursed enemy of Ford! Background: It has a 350 engine/350 tranny with a fairly new Edelbrock 600 carb and a Mallory HEI distributor with the vac. advance. I have tried this with the vac line hooked up to the carb on both ports at different times. I had to really advance the timing (I will have to check this Friday with the timing light to see what it really is) by ear to get it to stop hesitating on take off. It runs like a champ like this! The problem is when going to crank it, it cranks like it is really struggling against compression. Barely turns over and then catches and starts right up. If I reduce the timing, it starts right up but hesitates on hard take off. I have already tried changing the carb step up springs/bigger needles etc...no change on the hesitation. I am wondering if I need to change the springs out on the distributor (lighter?) to make the advance come in faster, thus stopping the hesitation and allowing me to put the timing back around 12 deg. or so? Heck, it is probably at 25 or 30 right now! Help would be appreciate on this, thanks, Gary!
 
consider a high torque starter so you can run a whole lot more initial timing.

MSD for example sells a spark retard unit that backs the timing way off when the RPM is below something like 800 RPM (helps the engine start). not sure what your ignition setup is.

of course this could all be a bandaid fix for some real issue. can you watch the timing with the vacuum hooked up in both ways to see how it's behaving?
 
Alrighty, I put the timing light on it and it is not advancing but just a tiny bit (maybe 2 deg or so) when I rev it. I have the tdc on the balancer painted white and the zero on the timing pointer. The timing is at 18 deg btdc. It won't advance with the vac line plugged into either port or unplugged all together. It should have mechanical advance by its self so it should move even if the vacuum adv. on the side is blown? So I think the distributor is fubared! I really don't want to take it apart to clean weights etc so I will probably just order one of the summitracing HEI dist. like I did on the stang. I am very pleased with it! Unless you have a better idea?
 
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