Quote:
JP wrote:
Actually, my old man was a motor mechanic and he always said to advance the timing until it pings under load, back-off a little and retest, and repeat until it seems right, which I think is essentially Jack's advice.
JP,
Sounds very familiar. Setting "by ear" is how my dad, also a motor mechanic, and also an owner of 3 V8 Packards, did most of his timing. He also used the timing light, but more as a diagnostic tool as I recall, checking advancing and holding at higher rpm. This, BTW, is a pretty inexpensive check of the integrity of the advance mechanisms, because any "creep" up or down at a steady rpm will be clearly visible.
Initial seat-of-the-pants distributor timing is a good place to start, and very much like your father's method of timing under load: Just advance until the idle gets rough from "skipping," then retard it a touch. A little bit of roughness in the idle can pay off in better road performance and mileage, if you can stand it. Usually helps driveability a bit, too, with less tendency to hesitate on initial acceleration (which is often misdiagnosed as a carb problem, when it's really a timing issue).
Anyway, that's my method, for what it's worth. Family tradition, I guess.
Thanks for bringing up this topic. I am very interested in how your distributor is finally set up and how it performs for you.
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