What I did this weekend (so far) and suggestions for timing

[chevychic]

I haven't posted much about my truck lately so here's an update.

I got my cracked frame welded up last week. Man, I didn't realize just what a difference that would make! I can actually drive in a straight line down the road!!
I'm going to be ordering the brace from Off-road designs in July to finish up the steering box area.

Then today I installed my new distributor. It was a tough choice, I was going to go with the MSD ultimate HEI kit but since I'm running all stock, I didn't figure I'd need it for awhile. What I really wanted to do was to replace the entire distributor to get rid of any and all problems my old one was having. The MSD was more than I wanted to spend, so I went with a Summit Racing brand HEI. Ordered it Wednesday and it was on my porch Friday morning!

I ran into a couple of minor problems when installing it. On trying to start the truck it would backfire out the carb so I did some researching on chevytalk since our search doesn't work right now....and found my problem. I was off 180°...Reset the engine to TDC, then couldn't get the distributor to sit all the way down so I had to fiddle with the oil pan thingamajig so the distributor would sit in with the rotor where it needed to be.
Started it up, set the timing to the specs in my manual and was ready to cruise. What a difference! My miss at idle is completely gone, and I'm expecting to have fixed my miss at high rpms.
Will know for sure in a couple of days.

Hopefully *fingers crossed*, this will be the last of my troubles for awhile so I can actually afford to do all the other stuff to make the truck nice.

What do you all run your timing at? I've seen opinions vary with the majority being between 8° - 10°. My Chiltons says 4° which seems low. I set it at 8° for now but wanted some ideas of what I should set it at to get optimal power and mpg.


Thanks to any of you that had posted or responded to posts on the other forum...without seeing all the threads about everyone else's troubles, I would've had to swallow my pride and actually ask someone what I did wrong!