Super tuning car runs good shooting for great

Abodybomber said

Are you willing,to commit to premium(a j oke,in itself ) pump gas?.. At 200 cranking : I would Personally,I would start with wideband O2 sensors,before adding that vacuum advance..FWIW,quite a bit of adjustments,via allen wrench in stock mopar diaphragms. I would worry about air & fuel ratios ,before vacuum advance. J.M.O....

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I agree with all that, even with the aluminum heads pump gas gets sh***ier every year I would run strictly premium. I had to do the same on my iron Magnum headed 10.5:1 360, after I saw the telltale signs of detonation ('dust' on spark plugs, tiny pits on piston heads) I added a hood scoop for proper cold-air intake and now only run "premium" 91 after also adjusting the timing a hair.

If you want to tune properly by the plugs you need a plug reader tool or similar microscope thingy (Mike Finnegan from Roadkill recommends a doctor's tool for looking inside ears) to look down at the lower parts of the porcelain. The wideband O2 sensor and AFR gauge is a huge help for tuning as well but if you want that last bit of physical information to get the tune 100% spot-on you kind of need to check the plugs.

As far as vacuum advance goes that just helps during cruise/light throttle (in case you didn't already know) for better MPGs and reduced cylinder wear. There are writeups out there on how to adjust the Mopar vacuum advance if you search, my advice would be to use a Mity-Vac handheld pump with a line going into the car from the can on the dist. so you can adjust it on-the-fly while driving and figure out what the engine likes best. And/or you can also pop off the dist. cap and look at the advance plate while you pump up the vacuum and watch the gauge on the pump; this will give you a good idea of when the can starts to pull.