trouble advancing timing
 

i recently reset my base timing after installing cobra intake. i did this by turning the crank to "0" degrees and making sure the rotor was pointing at #1plug wire. The engine started up fine in that position, albeit with a very lopy idle.

today i bought a timing light and tried to advance my timing. i decided to go with 14 degrees and if i heard pinging was gonna back it off (it's cold, and i've got 87 octane in the tank, so figured i would probably get some pinging) until the pinging went away. here's the procedure i followed and the problem i encountered:

i unplugged the spout connector, loosened the hold-down bolt just enough to turn the distrib by hand, hooked up the timing light and turned the key. the engine fired up just as before. when i aimed the timing light at the balancer (with the clip on #1 wire), however, i got a reading of 10 degrees ATDC.

how can this be? shouldn't i have gotten a "0" reading where i had it set? how could it have started up at 10 ATDC? i tried turning the distrib clockwise but there's only so far i can turn it before the wire harness hits the intake and i can't turn it anymore, and that only got me back up to what the timing light said was "0" degrees TDC.

is there a prob with my balancer? has something slipped? i'm confused now. can anyone help me?wall:

the odds of you actually stabbing it at "0" is pretty slim. You may have to pull it out and advance it one more tooth to get the right amount of movement in the distributor to get the advance your looking for.

10* ADV. is your base timing with spout out. If you want 14* ADV. your going to need 94 Oct to take the ping away.

What kind of timing light did you buy? is it the one were it has a dial on it? or is it the plain jane timing light with no settings?.

it's the plane jane one with no dial - just point it and shoot and the lights start flashing so i can read off the balancer. i asked about the one with the dial but the salesman told me i didn't need it and it was twice as expensive. the timing light i got should be good enough to read the timing and advance it by rotating the distrib though, isn't it?

if you put it back at 0 timing, that is 10 degrees of total timing

Don't worry it is correct

Well if its just the basic model, just point at it and it should read 10* with spout out.
good luck :)

^How do you figure that? 0 is 0, 10 is 10.

Steve, you must have the distributor out a tooth, you should easily be able to set it to 14 deg. without the module wire hitting. Pull it out and try a tooth ahead, you may need someone to "bump" the engine over with it in there in order for it to seat.

Also, you can run 14 deg. with 87 octane-I do it all the time, no pinging at all-every car is different though, but you should be fine.

Holy !!! I would love to see that. Im not calling you a lier but I would really like to see that.
I couldn't even run 91 OCT without ping @ 14* ADV but 94 sure did fix the problem :)

87 @ 14* ADV man your lucky if you can do that ;)

Ya never mind I re-read his post...you are out a tooth


I would burn premium any time you bump up your timing but that is just me, you might be able to get away with it but why chance it for 10 cents a litre

Done it on 4 different 5.0L foxes, one even had H/C/I, never ran anything but regular.thumb: