Tuning For Detonation

Keep in mind, although this is in the slant six section and is a slant six, these tuning tips will work for any engine that has detonation issues.

yellow rose has been really cool about advice and what not. Some things I was going to try already, others I hadn't thought of.

So we began off the bat with initial "about" 20. I hadn't yet measued total, as this was a new engine and I wanted to make sure eveything was all broken in good and "settled down" and everything else with the car was good.

Once all that was done, we started driving it around, first trip was to my friend Freddie's house, as yall saw in the video. On the way back from Freddie's Kitty says "what's that noise?" after I kinda crowded into it some. After a few more times, between me making it do it and her great description, we determined it was prorbably spark knock. Got back and dropped initial back to 15 and Kitty said although it was still there, it was not as loud. So, now we had confirmation.

So far, I've gone from RN14YC to RN9YC and blocked off the exhaust heat entierly. Doing both those has us where we are now. It only rattles now if I crowd hell out of it in 2nd and high gears at lower RPM than I really "should" and it does not rattle "AT ALL" until the temp gauge comes up some, so we're really close already.

One more footnote.....last tank of gas I got, I put in 90 non ethanol. If I can get it not to rattle on that, I am petty certain it also won't rattle on 87. Really have not noticed ONE BIT DIFFERENCE between 87 and 90. ZERO

My last step I did was put the FBO limiter plate in the distributor last night. It's back running again, but I've not yet set the timing back right, as I was tired last night. I put the plate on the 14 degree slots, as I want to run 20 initial, because the engine really liked that. This will limit the total to 34, 20 initial, plus the 14 mechanical. It was at 40 total all in at 3000 RPM without the limiter plate and on 15 initial, so the 40 was too much and likely why it was encountering spark knock. We should have it very close now.