massive reconfiguration time again.

Cudafever said
Ok so here is the theory that i have been told(May not be accurate for a highway vehicle.)

You should have burn or discolor down 3 threads if you have the right heat range spark plug in.

If the timing is right, should be starting around the ground bend......to about were it is now.

Fuel curve should have a light gray(depending on fuel grade) color all the way around the base ring(were the ground strap is welded on) If you don't have a fuel ring all the way around the base, you could be getting lean.

So with that said......Its to cold of a spark plug
Timing is to high and its running rich..............
The problem with a street eng is everything affects everything.
Does your mechanical curve ramp to fast(compression with a street car i say yes)
do you have too much advance in the vac canister, advance???
To much initial timing???..... need to take more out of the mechanical curve????

The problem is that plug is showing idle, cruise (fuel tranfer slot) to hill climbing(running thru the main booster), to full throttle (main boost and power valve inrichment(If it s a holley or metering rods if its not.)

I'm not the one to tell any one, how to tune a street car........but that's what i see/read on your plug......But it's for full throttle, cut clean drag racing.

Let me say this first and it keeps swirling in my head that after the first year of just basically drag racing only I took the heads off and put 202 valves instead of the 188''s. At that time there was a little bit of detonation on the tops of the Pistons but just very very start of something. I showed the Machine Shop my plugs with the porcelain sticking out about a quarter of an inch LOL and he said well this is way too hot. And recommended the ones that I'm using now. Back when I had an average cranking pressure of 190.
I sure appreciate you taking the time because I'm getting a little bit lost with all these things for some reason. It's always ran at about 35 36 degrees of advance with my old cam. It was used a lot for drag racing but a lot of putting as well. I always seemed to be burning rich and have black plugs.
Now I've changed the cam and my compression is higher so I backed the timing off to 34 right out of the gate. I've been putting smaller and smaller Jets and larger metering rods to lean the carbs to stop having such a rich condition. but here I am reading the plugs and seeing some speckling on the porcelain thinking I'm back to getting detonation. But still seeming to run very rich as you can see from the plug that I just pulled out the other day. All these plug reading things I'm trying as well LOL.. I'm constantly watching my AF gauge. It runs down my driver side header. It was burning about 14.2 on the freeway which I thought was a little high for cruise at 28 to 3000 RPMs. About 68 miles an hour. I have no vacuum advance canister. I would think what timing curve was probably about 3/4 open at the time. On post #1028 I'm showing my timing curve.

This is a side-by-side comparison of the number 2 spark plug. I believe they're the same heat range that's why I bought the NGK. The one on the right is the one that I've been running for a while and it's in Autolite ar3934. The one on the left has a hundred miles on it mostly freeway and it's the NGK 4554.
That was what really the first time I've ever took it on the freeway and had it like that for 45 minutes at a time. It's mostly driving around town and short verse of yeehaw... I thought it was the timing because I dropped it down 2 about 32 degrees total. a good Lord I was reading somewhere just recently were too low of timing was the cause of too much heat in the combustion chamber. It was running 170 cool-as-a-cucumber the whole time outside the combustion chamber...