Yes, another timing question!

scooby67 said
Idle speed is 950, converter is a Hughs 2500 stall, rear gears are 4:10. At idle I had around 5" of vacuum. When I hooked up a the guage and gave it more timing, the engine RPM increased, smoothed out and the vacuum went up to around 11". It sounded so good, I left it there for the moment and checked where the inital was. It was at 30 degrees, which I felt was insanely high. I drove it for just a few minutes and it felt great!! However, I didn't want to burn a valve or something, so I backed it down to 14 degrees initial. If it's happy with more inital timing, let's say 22 degrees, then I will have to just limit the amount of mechanical at the distributor.

Thanks for the info. That's really not a bad combo you have. I'll speculate that the cam may be a little larger then you think. The vacuum readings are pretty low when the timing is dialed back. I would check your balancer and confirm your mark is at true TDC, so your not getting bogus readings. If that confirms then it's possible the cam was installed a little more retarded then it likes and lower vacuum and more needed timing would be the result. At some point you may want to get a MSD type ignition system as i have found them to wake up drivability on setups like yours. One other possibility is the converter which i believe is a little tight for what you have. I think your on the right track for now and as crackedback says, give it the timing it needs and limit the total if need be.

I'll also say i have usually prefered a little softer bottom end on a street car with that much power because you'll get to a point where it's completely useless and just blow the tires off at will:D