You may want to speak with someone with a LOT of experience about this before you go off and re-curve a distributor back to "stock", and then call 'er good. Why?
I'm working on a '71 VG Valiant from Oz with a 318 (think '69 Dart, if that helps), and the original distributor was all but worn-out. Now, in Australia, in order to meet "local content" regulations, they used Lucas distributors Back in the Day, and before I did a little digging around on this thing, I was thinking, "Where am I going to find any info on a Lucas distributor, from Oz, from 1971?" (Bazza, the vehicle owner, wants to keep the car as OEM as possible).
As luck would have it, turns out that "
The Lucas Guy" here in the States runs his shop about 30 minutes south of where I work (
Advanced Distributors, LLC), so I got him on the phone...
Long story short: When I dropped-off the original distributor with him, I also gave him several pages of photocopies I had taken right out of the original Shop Manual, thinking they would be helpful. He said (in summary) that the mechanical info would be helpful, but as for the advance curves- unless I wanted the car to run like **** (his exact words), there was
no way he would curve that distributor, with those numbers, knowing the car was going to be running on today's gas.
In other words, if the engine is stock, what worked back then most likely isn't going to work now.
Or at least not very well.
Just my $.02 worth.
Jim
