Finally its alive!!!

[BBDART74]

I finally heard the sweet sound of my 400 come to life tonight it sounds great. I wanted to thank everyone on this site who has helped me along the way, no better people than MOPAR people. I just have one more thing to ask just for curiosity sake alot of guys on this site said you stop 8-10 degrees before TDC when installing distributor why is this I'm new to Big blocks but on all others I have always placed it right on 0, just wondering? THANKS AGAIN

 

[Burntorange70]

Congrats! That is very cool. It is very nice when it all comes together.

If you put it at 0 the spark starts to burn but it takes a micro second to light the A/F in the champer. buy that time the piston is down a little in the hole. So to get it to light off at TDC you need to light the plug a little befor top dead center to give the A/F time to burn all the way.

Don't know if that helped you any but some of the tech guys will chime in and give you a better example.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[moper]

I usually start at a hair ahead of zero. If it's an engien that has been dry for a while or apart extra timing can help get it running easier. But really, if things are good, you can go from zero or after TDC (retarded timing) to more than 20° advanced initial... It should run either way, but the quality if that running, and behavior, will be very different between the initial timing settings. Now go have fun...lol