I don't understand. How was the original timing "determined?" Was it run on a dyno and that's where it made the best torque? Was it run at the track and adjusted for best performance or plug reading? Was it just set at a number from past experience and left there because it performed well enough?
I am not judging here, just curious why it is even considered an issue without more info. I always treated the numbers on the balancer as increments, a reference point for adding or taking away a couple degrees here and there. Never really cared what the final number was, other than to know where to put it back if the distributor ever came out for some reason.
Either way, I am happy to see this was not very bad damage and you are getting it back together again.
There are a number of very similar combos around now like I have.
The Bloomers dyno’ed such a motor at BES several years ago. 34 degrees total was the sweet spot. The guy on here (Vic) who has the red AMX runs that motor.
I am a bracket racer, I set the timing to be 34, it ran fine, and never moved it around after that. If it don’t stink, don’t stir it.
I never played with it, every time I am at the track, I don’t like changing things if they are working, it just takes away from what I am there for, to hopefully go rounds.
From what I understand, I have been running my timing that I thought was at 34 degrees, at actually 29 degrees. If that indeed proves to be the case, that would make a substantial difference with how the car runs.
I have raced enough small blocks to know 29 degrees isn’t right.
We will hopefully find out soon. I know what it should run within a couple numbers every time I take it to the track. I will know within a couple good hits if we indeed found a problem and fixed it.
I am not so sure moving the cam 2 degrees will show up on the slip, but I know it certainly won’t hurt, and might indeed help.
Most important part of any pass is the first 60 foot, it has the biggest impact.
There are a lot of things I don’t know, I learned a lot the last few days with an ultra sharp guy in my corner helping me get this thing apart and back together.
I am not gonna slam myself. There is a lot of stuff I have learned the last 50+ years racing, and I have a very good memory.