Says in the initial post that hes running 12 degrees initial. Did I miss something? EDIT- I misread that....12 degrees mechanical. Duh.....Yeah, 22 initial is a problem. Carry on....
I had a guy set total on his machine but I got it apart on bench right now with another distributor with same part number. I don't see any difference besides the one I had in had a curve kit. I've had three different sets of weights on it and no luck
What is the part # of the distributor? Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but, didn't the later distributors have less mechanical advance compared to the earlier ones for emission purposes?
We are talking about a GM big cap HEI here. In general, they had more mechanical advance, so you had to run less initial advance. While points distributors can use a bushing on the advance pin in the slot, big cap HEI's do not use that mechanism, but rather limit the mechanical advance by the shape and size of the centerpiece and weights. In post 28 (page 2) of the Power Timing thread, Andy made his own method. Here is a cut and paste of that post. "I bought the moroso recurve kit for my 350 HEI but I ended up modding the thing myself because the kit was inadequate. It did not come with bushings so I was on my own with the total advance. First I took the dist apart and welded up the plate as an alternative to bushings. The trial and error process was taking too long. I am impatient about things like this so I thought of an alternative to bushings. I made two adjustable stops out of machine screws. I put the nuts on the screws and held them with vise grips and used a bench grinder to make the head into a cam shape. I used nylock nuts on the screws so they didn't losen up. I'm pretty sure I used holes that were factory. I did have to grind off a tiny part of the under part of the rotor to clear the screw heads. Now total advance is easily adjustable with the rotor off. The springs did not get my advance in when I wanted it either. If you look closely in the pic the weights are modified as well (the pointy part). The shape and size of the weights as well as the cam the ride on have a lot to do with how fast the advance comes in. The moroso weights and springs did not do the trick. Now the advance is all in by 2000. I also made am vacuum advance stop similar to the one larry posted. It works fine." http://www.v8buick.com/index.php?threads/power-timing-your-buick-v8.63475/page-2 http://www.v8buick.com/index.php?attachments/hei_mod-jpg.42143/
I see. Should of looked there before saying that!! I will look at that thread again. Can't read that too many times!
111295 is my dist #. I pulled out the original one and put in the one I had been using for comparison. It's a 111295 also. I used #383 center piece and 053 weights with the lightest springs. Now I have 12*initial but only 25* total. It starts right up when engine is warm. Guess I'll keep playing with it to get more mechanical advance.
Well, I'm still messing with the weights and springs. No luck. Anyone here re-curve distributors? Should I make my slots bigger? Open to more suggestions.
