Why so much inital timing???

mopowers said

Thats the point at which I get the highest vacuum reading in gear at idle. It's also around where the RPMs stop increasing when adding timing. Also, it seems to fire up and idle a lot faster at that point, than say the 20* where I had it before when I was messing around with it, with better throttle response too. Am I off base? Thanks for the input btw. Didn't mean to start a **** storm. Just never had an engine that seemed to 'want' this much initial before. I runs great though, with no hiccups. Once I finish tuning a couple different carbs I have for it, I'll be taking it out to the track for some testing.

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I have run 20 plus degrees initial on everything I do for years.

My car, a street car, has the distributor locked out at 36 degrees, so at idle, that's what it has. May like 38, but I'm not there yet.

Generally, if you can't run all that initial, you gave up power somewhere else. Even on the beloved Chevy.


You are plenty good. Give your combo what IT wants. Not what the keyboard tuners do. They learned it from someone else who learned it on the net, who learned it from someone who learned it on the net, who learned it from someone who learned it from a dude who leaned on the fence at the track. But the dude could tell a great story.