Hi all. I am helping my dad out on his 33 Ford roadster with a SBC 350 in it. The engine is a bit of a mystery, It is a Hecho En Mexico block, with 041 iron heads. Stock or RV cam, sounds very mild. Not sure if it has flat tops or not. It had an Edelbrock dual plane with a Quickfuel 650 DP. Nothing else is really known, It came in the car and it runs. The distributor is a OEM Hei. We Set the Total Mechanical timing to 34 degrees at 3000 rpm with the Vac Adv. unplugged. The timing is all in at 2400 rpm. The timing is sitting at 19 degrees at idle with the vac advance off and goes up to 35 with it on. As far as I know, it should be 34 all in Mech, and around 10-12 at idle. So some how I'm idling 7-9 degrees too far advanced. The car runs OK like this, dosent seem to knock or anything, but im worried its too much timing.
Take the cap off and grab the rotor and turn it and let it go,,if it snaps back it's not the problem but if it moves slowly you probably need to pull the distributor,,it could be gunked up. HRP
Yeah, We took it all apart and everything was freely moving. It snapped back too. We noticed the springs are small, The same as the light blue springs in the MSD advance kit. Could it be already to far advanced at idle if the springs are too light?
I had an issue over the weekend where once I wound my sbc up in my 49 truck, it would start breaking up bad. I took apart the distributor, found the centrifugal arms that swing out to be stuck on top of each other, one was missing the spring, basically severely worn. I stopped at pep boys and got the "Proform" HEI rebuild build kit, It has 3 different sets of springs, the guides, cap rotor coil, pretty much every replaceable part in a distributor for $85. My truck runs great now, well worth the money.
I have been running at 19 derees advance at idle for the last 8500 miles and have not had an issue. No pinging and runs good. I read where the more advance at idle, the cooler it runs too.
Ok. Does yours go up to 34-36 max? I was just reading that a stock hei should have 20* of mechanical. So, 12 base + 20(+/-1) mechanical advance should be in the 32-36 range at 3000rpm and not go any higher. Also, if we run the vac advance off the manifold vac on the base of the carb, the timing goes to 35 degrees at idle, but the car has no off the line power and stalls sometimes. So we have it hooked to the ported vac on the metering block. It seems to have a lot more bark like this. We are going to try another distributor we have laying around tomorrow, I think it may just be tired. My dad thinks maybe the timing gear on the crank is a multi-key one and is not on right.
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