Calling Nick a tuner is a stretch. A looooooooooooong stretch.
Never have I seen the guy do anything other than twist the distributor to move the timing curve up or down. That’s it.
Never have I watched the guy read a plug. Ever. And I’ve seen many of his videos.
As a smart guy on Moparts always says, guys don’t use a curve because they don’t know how to do it. And because it’s easy and doesn’t require any testing.
I can show dyno numbers that proves what locked out and all in early curves do to torque and power. And it’s absolutely provable. And it happens every time.
If you want to piss away torque and power because you are too lazy to do the work or too obtuse to learn that’s on you.
I’ll continue to jump in and try and teach people the correct way to tune. It’s harder to do and it takes more time, effort and work to do it.
I’ll break it down as simply as I can.
You really need to get on an engine dyno (not a chassis dyno because you can’t load the engine) and find BEST torque at every 1000 rpm.
Then you need a distributor machine so you can get the curve in the distributor to match what the engine told you it wants on the dyno.
Just changing springs and stopping the curve isn’t getting a curve.
You see Bewy, I’ve LEARNED that engines, ALL ENGINES want LESS timing at and around peak torque and MORE timing at and around peak power.
That is the physics of it. I know you understand this, which means you are either so bull headed or lazy or both that you ignore the facts and continue to give out bad advice.
My advice for anyone building an engine is this, and it’s not easy, quick or cheap.
Measure to verify your compression ratio. Using published piston volumes is not accurate enough.
Make big boy decisions about your build. If you want a “top fuel” idle then live with the results. You will have an engine with shitty performance that is a nightmare to tune. Fuel mileage will be hideous.
In my opinion, once the giggles of the idle wears off the big cam, low compression engine will still be exactly what it is. A fuel burning, low performance pig.
You need to match your compression ratio to your cam timing. If you do that, you won’t need 30 plus degrees of initial timing to get even a decent idle.
The engine will burn the fuel much more efficiently, run cooler and use LESS timing (which reduces pumping losses) and fuel consumption will be less. Most times far less timing.
The engine will be more sensitive to header tuning.
The expansion ratio is higher with higher compression. That makes more power.
It’s simple really. Low compression, big cam engines are a loser on every count except idle.