Help please, plug reading wizards!
A little more info, to start. To break in the engine I did the initial on a run stand at a friend's house. Once it was in the truck I got it running and drove it politely for the first 100 miles or so, at varying speeds. After that I did the occasional harder acceleration as I got more miles on it. It hasn't been driven super hard but it's not been babied for the current 700 miles.
The ignition is the HEI conversion, I forgot to mention that earlier. The distributor is a Super Six with a fresh rebuild.
Well Zach, what are we readin here? Idling in the driveway? What? You cannot just yank plugs and get a good read on them any time. There is a procedure. Which procedure did you use?
I'm such a newb at diagnosis, I had no procedure at all. I parked the truck from its last grocery store run and pulled the plugs a week later. I saw your process in your later post, I'll give that a try.
Want to take a temp gun and make sure that cylinder is not running hot for some reason.
I have a temp gun and will give this a shot.
On first start up with your fresh engine, performance cam, timing could have been off and too rich of carb jetting, not to mention the assembly lubes you have to burn out of it.
Yes, timing was all over the place while I fiddled with it. It doesn't help that my two best local resources, both very experienced slanters, disagree on ported or manifold vacuum. I tried them both but I don't know which was better. I currently have it on manifold vacuum and set at about 18* initial. I do not get any pinging under heavy load.
Most people put too big of cam in their builds, so that creates a lot of valve overlap at idle.
The cam isn't all that much bigger than stock, it's more of an RV cam for better low end grunt.
Good time to put in a fresh set of plugs, take it out and run it up over 2000 rpm for at least a half hour.
I can do this, as you and RRR suggest.
One other complicating factor that I was going to address in another thread, is I have a ticking/clicking noise to deal with and I can't find it. My hearing is poor and I can't tell where sound comes from as I only have one ear that works and that one is mediocre at best. I've had a half dozen knowledgeable car guys try to help locate it but so far no luck. I did re-lash the valves last week but I'm going to double check that. I'm hesitant to keep running the truck until I find the noise in case it's something No Good inside the engine. However, the noise has been going on for a while and it's not getting worse so I'll deal with that after I go through the suggestions above. We are in the middle of a very intense and extended rainstorm so it will likely be a few days until I can check things out.
