stock 318/904 auto dist recurve?

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Dakota_Don

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Hi all, I have the petronix ignitor II and coil w/o the ballast in my 68 dart.

The engine is bone stock 41 yrs old. Would this engine benifit from a dist re-curve?

if so what would i need to do to find the sweet spot?

do i want it in early, or late?

the dist is an a-1 cardone reman..

thanks

Don
 
I will take a stab.

No. If your car is "bone stock" a remanufactured Distributor is exactly that...remanufactured.

If you want to plot the distributors' timing curve you could.
By knowing what kind of curve you have, and what that distributors' maximum advance is...you could fine tune it to your specifications.

But...if your car is completely bone stock, there is not much need to go in to it real deep.

My advice to you...is: Warm the car up....hook up a vacuum gauge. Loosen the dizzy hold down and tune the distributor to the highest vacuum you can achieve ->Advance, <-Retard.....somewhere around 15-18 in" Vac, tune your carb to idle at the recommended rpm and at the new distributor setting. Lock the distributor down. Shut off the car. Wait 10 seconds and hit the key....it should hit (crank up) without touching the gas pedal almost immediately and settle into idle. And what ever the exact intial timing setting is on the timing marks....is just where your engine likes to run.

Thats the best I can do for you over the internet.

Good Luck.
 
Prine said:
I will take a stab.

No. If your car is "bone stock" a remanufactured Distributor is exactly that...remanufactured.

If you want to plot the distributors' timing curve you could.
By knowing what kind of curve you have, and what that distributors' maximum advance is...you could fine tune it to your specifications.

But...if your car is completely bone stock, there is not much need to go in to it real deep.

My advice to you...is: Warm the car up....hook up a vacuum gauge. Loosen the dizzy hold down and tune the distributor to the highest vacuum you can achieve ->Advance, <-Retard.....somewhere around 15-18 in" Vac, tune your carb to idle at the recommended rpm and at the new distributor setting. Lock the distributor down. Shut off the car. Wait 10 seconds and hit the key....it should hit (crank up) without touching the gas pedal almost immediately and settle into idle. And what ever the exact intial timing setting is on the timing marks....is just where your engine likes to run.

Thats the best I can do for you over the internet.

Good Luck.
Click to expand...

thanks, so i will unhook the vac advance,hook up my vac gage and set the intial at the highest vac reading, lock it down, hook the vac advance up adjust the carb, turn it off . wait a few seconds then fire it up.

sounds easy enough, the vacume gage is tool i always forget i have.

thanks
 
I think the vacuum will keep going up as you advance the timing.jmo

You want to find the highest initial timing it'll still start with when fully warmed up and set it there, then find a way to limit the mechanical advance to what the motor runs best with.

eXample 26* initial and 35* full advance @ 3000+ rpm
 
I dont know of any engine that has not responded to a performance curve. Timing by vacuum or ear just doesn't do it for me. Limit total advance, bring it in faster, and every engine will respond. I just did it on the single point dist. on my anemic 170 1bbl in my '65. Starts better, pulls better, gets about 5mpg better with no other changes other than idle speed and mix adjustment after. And all with a really bad cam lobe..lol.
 
There was some extremely detailed info on distributer recurve at moparstyle a couple years ago. I might have saved it here somewhere if searching their archives doesn't prove fruitfull.
The process will be a great learning experience even if it doesn't yeild a huge improvement.
 
RedFish said:
There was some extremely detailed info on distributer recurve at moparstyle a couple years ago. I might have saved it here somewhere if searching their archives doesn't prove fruitfull.
The process will be a great learning experience even if it doesn't yeild a huge improvement.
Click to expand...

search it but didnt find anything..
 
One of the biggest performance increases I've done to my car was a dist recurve. And cost nothing. Here's my recipe.
1. Take apart dizzy
2. Weld up advance slot about 1/16"
3. Put it all back together
This gave me about 32 degrees total timing with initial timing set to 16-18 degrees.
Hooked up vacuum advance and lovin it. No more ping!
IDK why they didn't make them like this in the first place.
 
How about this.....

Remove the heavy spring and with a lil screw driver bend open the coils on the other lighter spring, that way you'll get a adjustable initial without having to limit, by welding or what ever, the total advance.
 
i think even a stock motor will be helped by curving the dist. what i would do is get the light springs (summit sells them). pull the heavier stock spring out of the dist and replace it with one of the new light springs. that should bring total timing in at around 2200rpm+/-. then set total at about 35* and go from there. see what the initial is and how it runs. you can either tighten or loosen the curve from that point.
 
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