Timing Trouble.

[67ragtop]

Motor sounds good in car but when I put it in gear it starts to hesitate. When its in drive and give I it the gas it stalls out, so I am getting the timing light tomorrow. I was looking at the marks on the water pump and you can barely see them because there blocked by the radiator hose. Anyone have any tips???

 

[danielb927]

Could be the idle mixture screws too, mine were too rich and when I gave it hard gas it would die on me, screwed them in about a turn and it starts better now as well as not dying!

 

[fishy68]

Definetly check and set the timing first. I've had them that are hard to see the timing indicator also but you just have to do it. Timing affects carb. settings so it has to be right to even adjust the carb. correctly. It sounds like an adjustment of the carb. idle mixture screws are in order too. How old is the carb? Does the accelerator pump give a good shot when you open the throttle?

 

[67ragtop]

Set the timing to 35.Car runs alot better. Think I need to get rid of single plane torker intake. This guy I met in my local club was a tremendous help and found a few other things wrong and fixed them.

 

[67ragtop]

One more question I thought of was does the spark plug gap have to be adjusted from stock specs? I am running a pertronix system complete with coil and have the spark plugs at .035.

 

[fishy68]

Not sure on the output of the Pertronix system. I have a Mallory system and have had MSD on cars before and generally find any more than .040 does no better so I set mine at .040". Try playing with it and see what happens. It may like a wider gap and it may not.

 

[crackedback]

Set the timing to 35.Car runs alot better.

What the split on that? Initial and mechanical?

Setting timing using the total method on a street car is not the best approach. Sometimes you get lucky and it's pretty good, most times the distributor has too much mechanical advance in it and initial isn't sufficient.