Vacuum advance
What does the stall have do with timing or detonation?
You said it; For power, the engine doesn't care about any timing below the stall-rpm.But just trying to give the engine the timing it wants at stall is a very big deal .
Everybody is so concerned about power-timing, IMO, they lose sight of all the engines other timing requirements.
Lets say your engine is ok with 36* at 3400 rpm for Power Timing. and lets say you are running the typical 2.76s with say 205/75-14 tires at 26.1 tall which is a roll-out of 82 inches. And let's go with a typical 2200 stall at say 15% slip (first gear). Ok the first time you hit 3400 rpm, the speed will be ~34 mph. So until that moment, your Power-Timing has probably not been right. But hang on;
On a typical trip ; How often are you at 34 mph with the hammer down in first gear? And for how long will you be there?
Lets say it's Saturday night, 5pm and you will be cruising until 10Pm, so that is 5 hours/300minutes/18,000 seconds. And you will stomp it about once every 10 minutes for 1.5 seconds, the time it takes to be speeding. Oh wait.... you are already at 34 mph in second or third, in a 35 mph zone. OK whatever, you nail it. so every 10 minutes is 30 times during the evening and so 30 x1.5=45 seconds at WOT, so (18,000less 45)/18000= 99.75 percent of the time, you will not be at WOT. But most guys will insist on running the PowerTiming up to the max.
Now consider the stall speed. Say 2200. During the evening, nearly every time you take off, on a Saturday night, the engine is gonna get up on the stall, so that's where the timing needs to be perfect; or at least as close to perfect as you can get it, else your engine will seem/be lazy. Which is irrespective of the rear gear. Of course the smaller the rear gear, the lazier it will be.
IMO, max-timing below stall, is only important to a guy who doesn't understand the bottom end tuning, and trys to use max idle-timing as a crutch for something else.
In my experience 12 to 16 degrees of Idle-Timing, at about 1000ft elevation, with decent cylinder-pressure, will allow you to get your WOT stall-timing pretty close. Closed chamber Alloy heads will typically not need as much as iron open-chambers.
For a guy with a street hi-compression alloy-headed 360, I challenge you to feel the difference between 32 and 36 degrees of Power-Timing. With typical gearing, say 3.23s, you will only pass thru the power peak once on the way to 65 mph. With 3.91s you might get there a second time..
However, I doubt the tires will have stopped spinning so....... just try and measure the ET difference. lol.
So once again,
IMO,
for a streeter,
with low speed performance in mind,
getting the timing right at stall should take precedence over WOT Power-Timing so long as the Power-Timing does not get into detonation. If you can hit both, hey, that's good on you.
Unless you have a stroker, then who cares lol.
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it, lol.
