Need Tune Up Help

[davepl]

Originally Posted by geezer#99

Yup, you need to advance it a bunch.
The last six banger I had liked 14 initial.

Hmmm... 14 initial plus 36 mechanical built into the distributor? Without recurving that'll knock so bad people will answer the door as you drive down the street!

They certainly do like that much initial, no doubt, but you really do need to back it out of the total mechanical if you do that. It's a really simple change to the distributor but I don't know how you'd lock it out at 22 or so without a distributor machine. I guess you could trial and error it!

I was only a baby in 1970, but I think that retarded 0 degrees initial was an attempt to keep the EGTs really hot (retarding timing increases temps, contrary to most guesses).

Hang onto the AIR pump system. They take about 1/3 of a horsepower to operate and folks with a stock restoration are probably looking for one. I'm trying to reassemble the complete smog system for a 427 I'm restoring now!

[My personal guess is that in removing the SMOG system you made an error somewhere and have introduced an air leak - when you find and fix that, it'll operate with less timing and the idle screws will work. Just a guess though.]