Timing tips

So I can make things a little easier in that I actually only have a single 4 bbl throttle body instead of the duals. That was just the best picture I could find that showed the fuel rails. That being said, I think the front and back bores are all on a common linkage with no staging if I remember correctly, so all four open together at the same rate.

The manual trans is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand I think it gives me some more room for idle tuning to get what I want and like, but on the other getting the transition right when I first take off has been tricky. It likes to fall a little flat if I let the rpm drag a bit too much and then pops back up and does have some low speed buck to it. Not nearly as bad as my cammed Viper. I'm guessing I can get that sorted out with some timing tweaks, but it's just hard to see what's going on while I'm doing it and a datalog isn't really quite the same as sitting in the car feeling it. It would probably show up in the rpm or VSS as some jerk though, so I might be able to visualize it.

I also just ran my combo through an old engine simulator (Desktop Dyno 2003) for an idea of the theoretical horsepower and torque peaks so I'd have an idea where my combo might have moved stuff around. It's showing about 375 hp at 6000 rpm and 400 ft-lbs from 3500-4500. Seems reasonable to me, though maybe a tiny bit lower than I would have hoped for overall numbers. That being said, it should make a pretty nice street car.

Fueling is always the easy part of EFI tuning. You have a set value to shoot for and can even autotune to get there nowadays with a wideband sensor. I wish it was possible to do the same with timing. I guess with knock sensors you sort of can, but it's not really the best way and still risks hurting things worse than a rich or lean tune. I think I will look at getting the knocksense module to incorporate the stock sensors though. I think it was cheap enough and I'm pretty sure I still have the factory sensors bolted on.