HICKL Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 I finally went to the track to try out the stroker with the tunnel ram. Car was running about .7 off my last outing and seemed flat on the top end. Only did 2 passes and best was a 12.2 at around 110 mph. (last time out was doing 11.5 at 120 ish. Anyway, I had checked my timing before my first run and to my suprise, it showed to be way off, like 10 degrees after tdc at idle! I rolled the dist around to 12 btdc and locked it down. Reved it up and the mechanical advance took it to 35 ish so seemed to be working right. I then proceeded to make my 2 passes and with my poor results, I checked the timing again. My dist had not moved, but it was showing ot be way off again like before. I called it quits for the night and came home. I have not had much time to mess with it, but I did try another timing light to rule out that. I think maybe my balancer may be slipping and thus throwing the mark off. Short of that, would have to be an issue inside my Mallory Unilite dizzy or maybe an MSD box issue. Will pull a plug and rotate #1 to the top tonight and look at the the balancer mark. If that proves good, anybody got any other ideas? I do not have vacuum advance hooked up, so that is out of the equation. Thanks Jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grumpyvette Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 if your still running a stock style damper its basically not designed for over 4500rpm and prone to the elastomer ring seperation. your engine probably could use the timing set at about 6-8 degrees at idle and advance to about 37 degrees total at 3200rpm, as a starting point, naturally youll want the plug gaps at about .043-.045 and the fuel air ratio to be about 13:1-13.5:1 most of the time, your best power is usually around 12.7:1 but it wastes fuel and leaner than about 14:1 tends to run a bit hotter (detonation, might be a problem) best mileage usually near 14.7:1-15:1 but thats certainly not the goal with a tunnel ram if you don,t have one get an A/F ratio meter. personally Id suggest starting at the basics and do a compression check, verify TDC and the timing tab is correct, verify your getting the 5 psi or so in fuel pressure necessary and the correct fuel voluum, then adjust the valve lash and go from there! if you do as search on (reading plugs) youll get some useful info, you might want to verify your jets and power valves are correct also Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HICKL Posted June 23, 2008 Author Share Posted June 23, 2008 It is a stock damper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grumpyvette Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 It is a stock damper. Ive had good luck useing the FLUID DAMPERS brand, naturally youll need to get the correct one for YOU ENGINES ballance system and type,either INTERNAL or EXTERNAL BALLANCE http://www.jegs.com/i/Fluidampr/388/620101/10002/-1 a distrib shop should be able to verify the distrib function, I usually use MSD IGNITION components Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_hunt Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 Depending on what distributor your running you won't be able to get 36 or 37 degrees without more initial advance. The MSD distributors only advance 28 degrees max, the GM HEI is about 22 degrees. I don't know about the mallory distributors and how much they will mechanical advance. Under WOT you get no vacuum advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HICKL Posted June 24, 2008 Author Share Posted June 24, 2008 As I suspected, it was the balancer moving. It scares me to think of how much timing advance I had in it for those two passes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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