I am wonder if I need to recurve my Distributor since I change the cam in my engine and bored it .060. The transmission is a TH350 out of an 74 pontiac Firebird Trans Am. The trans has been rebuilt and stalls at about 2000RPM. What are syptoms of needing to recurve a distributor? I have a distributor out of an 72 buick 350. If I used this distributor how would it affect my engines proformance? THANKS Julian:beer
There is almost ALWAYS a performance increase with quickening your advance rate (curve). Even stock vehicles see improvements. This is what most of the high performance "Chips" do for newer cars (that and fuel curves, etc.) Get a kit and start in the middle with 2 medium springs. Of the car has a bigger cam, intake, etc, I have found that using one very light spring with one medium spring works best! Have Fun
Any speed shop or Summit or Jegs. Also - just curious, what did the machine shop say about boring your engine to 60 over? I have always heard that this is a risky deal! Andrew
Julian, Order the Crane adjustable vacuum advance canister from Jegs or Summit. It comes with 6 springs that will allow you to bring in your advance as early as 1600 or as late as 3200. Comes with easy to follow instructions. And when you install the adjustable vacuum advance, contact the ignitionman on this BB for a better way to limit the vacuum advance than the way Crane suggests. It's a really neat kit and reasonably priced. Check it out.
Thanks for the info people! The guy at the machine shop was given instruction to bore it .030 over but he went ahead and dit .060 because he said it would clean up at .030. I was pissed at first, because I had heard the same things too about the engine over heating if bored to much. It is to my suprise and pleasure that the .060 bore and new over bore pistons are a powerhouse. The cam and the engine bore are the too major modifaction to the engine. besides the heads being shaved , ported,and bigger valves. My 340 will hold it's own agianst most smallblocks that are not extremly built. The temp is normal oil presure is good, so no problems with the .060 bore. I can not wait to get it to the track to see if I can be the list 16.7 sec 1/4 mile run of a buickGs340 with same engine, but different trans and rearend.:beer :bglasses:
Oh the joy! People I had the anwser to my problems under my nose for over 2 months. I bought a pertronix kit off of ebay for $35, ok, but the guy sends me a whole distributor and accel wires. At the time I knew nothing about recuring distributors or what the weights and etc did. My dumb ass took the pertronixs kit and put it on my old worn out distributor. Car ran like **** from the first day to me as far as the amount of money spent for performance. I figured out something about my timing was bad, so i recurve the distributor, but one of the screws holes that hold down the vacc.advance was broken. So I decide to use the other distributor which turn out to be new with a recurve kit already installed with vacc advance, new wieghts, center wieght, bushing, springs. the only problem was the gear had broken teeths, so I put mine own along with the pertronix kit. Man I put that distributor in and the engine came out of a coma. I thought the engine was going to break the new mounts when I goosed the throttle slightly. I was to scared to go even to half throttle. I bought all this for 35 bucks off ebay 2.5 months ago. Damn if I only figured it out before I went to the track and ran 10.693 in the 1/8th pinging all the way down. Thanks for the advice and I will post new track time soon.
Cool! There is a God and he looks out for old Buicks! or in your case, old Buick engines.... :bglasses: - Bill
