Reluctor Phasing

one of my first threads on this amazing forum was about an intermittent exhaust "poof" sound from the drivers side exhaust on deccel, and very sluggish take off under hard acceleration. Ive had this annoyance since i swapped a V8 into my early-A. i had many awesome tips and things recommended to diagnose and try. nothing really made a HUGE difference, so being frustrated and miffed, i left it as is. ive been driving my beastie for 2 years, and its been a fun 2 years. so, having done literally every modification, tweaking, setting, checking, whatever, that has been recommended, or ive read/heard, i thought...."ya know what, i really havent checked the phasing in the distributor....oh damn." so, did the ol hole in the cap riggamoram, fired the beast up, and HOLY MOSES BATMAN!!!! the spark from the rotor to the cap was HUUUUGE!!!! the rotor was pasing the cap tower before it would fire, so the spark was jumping back. definitely not right. so, i set the engine to TDC 1, (yes i verified with a piston stop, that was one of the recommendations from the get go) i think it was dale (right?) 67dart23 that mentioned that, and set the reluctor with the pickup unit dead on, so my timing was as close to zero as i could possibly achieve. fired it back up, spark was still MASSIVE in length (im talking 1/8th inch or better) it was idling rough (to be expected) so i hooked up my vacuum gun to the vacuum advance (it puts in 14 degrees) and sucked er down. low and behold the spark was perfectly lined with the tower, and it was much more responsive off idle than ever before, and idled like butter. so, since the timing changed 14 degrees at the crank, then the reluctor to rotor is off 7 degrees, right?

One last thing i tried was switching the pickup wires on the distributor, i double checked before i switched them, and they were correct on the polarity. with the wires reversed, the spark was right on. Neato. set my static timing at 11, (distributor puts in 23 degrees) and went to check my "all in"........it went to outer friggin space....i had to set my static at -9 ATC so my "all in" was at 34. and no, my vacuum advance wasnt hooked up, nor was it connected to my vacuum gun. im assuming the reluctor signal was being mis-read due to the wave-form being reversed, causing the box to fire before it should have, changing the amount of advance? does this seem right? i was a bit confuzzled on that one.

anyway, i switched the pickup wires back to the way they should be, and my timing was dead on. 11 static, 34 all in. neat. i have a "corrected reluctor" on order from rick ehrenberg on Ebay, so i shall chime in wednesday when i get it installed and see how it does. just wanted to share my happenings with you fellas, and maybe get some thoughts or pointers. cheers.:drinkers: