HEI distributor timing fix?

[wrxand280z]

I was talking to a dyno shop today and they asked me what kind of distributor I had and I told them I had a HEI. They said I needed to remove the distributor and bring it to their shop to modify it for accurate timing.

 

Has anyone heard of this and is this something I can do on my own? They wanted $65 to do this but I had to remove it from the car, which as most of you know is almost impossible with out removing the engine.

 

Joe

[pparaska]

They want to put a custom mechanical curve on the HEI (good thing), and should be checking out the condition of it mechanically and electrically. This is a good thing to do, IMO. But you can use a timing light and a timing tape on the balancer to map out the mechanical advance timing curve and see if it's near what it should be (for example, something like 15-20 degrees mechanical advance all in by 3000 rpm).

 

Why is the distributor so hard to remove? Someone didn't remove the stock hood latch bracket from the firewall when they installed the engine (a la JTR method)?