So I just got my hands on a 1967 Buick Riviera GS. The car was restored about 15 years ago by a good friend of mine and his dad. For the last 5 years my father-in-law has owned it and it probably hasn't had more then a couple hundred miles on it in that time. He did go out and start it every few months but it wouldn't get driven for a year or so at a time. I picked the car up from him about a month ago and the water pump was toast. I just got the new one on a few days ago and have driven it about 40 miles or so. It seems to run pretty well, except for a few things. It has a ping if you put your foot into much more then half throttle. My dad and I are going to set the dwell and set the timing next week, I will also put some new plugs and fuel filter in it. As far as I know the motor is stock. I believe it was rebuilt about ten years ago, probably not more then a few thousand miles since then. I am going to try and find out the specifics on the rebuild. I believe the dwell is supposed to be 30 degrees and the timing is 2.5 degrees. I have a factory service manual that I will look at a little more, but if someone has a setting that seems to work good on todays gas I would love to try it out. Before I mess with any of this I am going to try and put a couple tanks of gas through since it has been sitting that whole time with an almost empty tank. Thanks, Joe
I don't know specs on early big block's much but that timing seems low to me and especially too low for pinging. There should be a rubber bushing on the advance peg that goes through a slot in the distributor. Over time these rot and fall off causing too much advance and ping. Most people never think to look at this as if you did not know about it than it does not appear anything is even missing. It is very difficult to see with dist. in the car. I bet this is your problem as you should be able to run alot more initial advance than that. I would think that with that little advance it would never ping and car would be a dog! I am just going by all my experiance with 455's however.
Dave, If he has the original distributor in the car, it has between 28 and 32* of mechanical advance, so 2 1/2* initial would give him up to 34-35* total. Those distributors were meant to use manifold vacuum to the vacuum advance unit, so the engine would idle up around 16-18* advance. Someone may have advanced the timing beyond 2 1/2* which would account for the ping. Let's see what the timing actually is when Joe checks it.
Thanks for all your responses Hi everyone, Thanks for giving me some ideas. The weather around here hasn't been very nice this week so I haven't been driving the car. The gas was probably 4 or 5 years old but there was only a couple of gallons in it. I filled it with Premium and I am going to try and get a couple of tanks through it once the weather clears up. I will try and look into that rubber bushing this weekend. I will post my findings as soon as I get a chance to check things out. Thanks again for the ideas. I will probably be doing some stuff with the family this weekend so if I don't get back on here till next week please don't think I am not appreciative, I will post what I find as soon as I find it. Joe
So here is what I've done so far Last weekend I went to my dad's and we set the dwell to 30 degrees, it was at 25. We then set the timing to 10 degrees it was at 15. With that done the car runs great. It seems to have a little less power then when it was at 15 degrees but there is no more ping. I don't see how the thing would even run at the 2.5 degrees the book says. I have run 1.5 tanks of gas through it so I am pretty sure all the gas I have in it is good. Then yesterday I put new Spark Plugs, wires, cap and rotor on the car and it helped to smooth it out a little more. With that being done I may try to get the timing back up just a little to gain some power back. Well it is raining again so it might be a few days before I drive it again. Thanks for the help, Joe
Joe, Check to make sure that the vacuum advance is working properly and is not stuck. That will make it a little sluggish when you get on it. Also check that you are getting most if not all of your advance in by around 2800 rpms. The advance weights sometimes get stuck with a little rust when an engine sits up for a while. Good luck, sounds like a great car! :TU: :TU:
