65 Barracuda daily driver
I finally pulled the distributor to use that FBO plate to recurve the mechanical advance. At first I noticed that pickup was not parallel to the reluctor. The reluctor was also a bit chewed up.
Chances are the pickup wasn't parallel to the reluctor because the plate wasa bent. I have now put in a new reluctor and bent the plate back and now it's pretty good.
To my surprise I realized that the FBO plate wasn't gonna work. I wasn't sure what I was looking at, so I searched this site and this appears to be a Mopar Performance distributor, where you can adjust the advance with a torque driver. I also posted in the ignition forum on this site and got some great info. There are some tuning keys, each for a certain amount of advance. I found some online and ordered them. Someone had pointed out that distributor degrees x2 equals crank degrees, so with the help of a protractor I and putting a small drill in the slot I was able to dial it in at 14 degrees advance (7 degrees rotor movement). The bigger spring does nothing in that range, but I left both in there as is.
When I was attempting to set the timing I noticed that the engine didn't come up to operating temperature. First I thought the thermostat was stuck open, but I took it out and it was closed, so that wasn't the issue. I threw it in a pot of boiling water and it opened, so it was definitely good. I had already bought a new 180 degree thermostat and installed that one instead of the 195 degree one I took out. No change. Turns out it was the temp sensor, so I replaced it with a new one and installed the 195 thermostat again (shouldn't have). Now it was going up to operating temperature and a little beyond. So I guess it was never reading right, despite it looking like it. So one more swap and now the 180 degree thermostat is in and it's reading correctly.
A FABO member sold me a FBO ignition box for 85 bucks including shipping. I had heard good things about them and I was already running a 1.5 ohm Flamethrower coil that FBO wants you to use, so I couldn't resist for that price. I was a bit hesitant to spend 300 bucks on one. I'm currently using their jumper wire, but eventually I want to rewire it with soldered connections with no ballast resistor. If it fails I'll have a problem, but I had already started to built an HEI box out of an old mopar ECU, so I'll use that as a spare. It would be the wrong coil for that, but it would at least get me home?! So timing is now set at 20 initial and it runs great like that. I didn't care for the sticker that FBO puts on the box, but it came off pretty easily and looks way better this way. Oh yeah, somehow the rpms don't drop as much as before when putting the car in gear (automatic).
I finally pulled the distributor to use that FBO plate to recurve the mechanical advance. At first I noticed that pickup was not parallel to the reluctor. The reluctor was also a bit chewed up.
Chances are the pickup wasn't parallel to the reluctor because the plate wasa bent. I have now put in a new reluctor and bent the plate back and now it's pretty good.
To my surprise I realized that the FBO plate wasn't gonna work. I wasn't sure what I was looking at, so I searched this site and this appears to be a Mopar Performance distributor, where you can adjust the advance with a torque driver. I also posted in the ignition forum on this site and got some great info. There are some tuning keys, each for a certain amount of advance. I found some online and ordered them. Someone had pointed out that distributor degrees x2 equals crank degrees, so with the help of a protractor I and putting a small drill in the slot I was able to dial it in at 14 degrees advance (7 degrees rotor movement). The bigger spring does nothing in that range, but I left both in there as is.
When I was attempting to set the timing I noticed that the engine didn't come up to operating temperature. First I thought the thermostat was stuck open, but I took it out and it was closed, so that wasn't the issue. I threw it in a pot of boiling water and it opened, so it was definitely good. I had already bought a new 180 degree thermostat and installed that one instead of the 195 degree one I took out. No change. Turns out it was the temp sensor, so I replaced it with a new one and installed the 195 thermostat again (shouldn't have). Now it was going up to operating temperature and a little beyond. So I guess it was never reading right, despite it looking like it. So one more swap and now the 180 degree thermostat is in and it's reading correctly.
A FABO member sold me a FBO ignition box for 85 bucks including shipping. I had heard good things about them and I was already running a 1.5 ohm Flamethrower coil that FBO wants you to use, so I couldn't resist for that price. I was a bit hesitant to spend 300 bucks on one. I'm currently using their jumper wire, but eventually I want to rewire it with soldered connections with no ballast resistor. If it fails I'll have a problem, but I had already started to built an HEI box out of an old mopar ECU, so I'll use that as a spare. It would be the wrong coil for that, but it would at least get me home?! So timing is now set at 20 initial and it runs great like that. I didn't care for the sticker that FBO puts on the box, but it came off pretty easily and looks way better this way. Oh yeah, somehow the rpms don't drop as much as before when putting the car in gear (automatic).