Timing advance problems

545 solid roller cam and msd mechanical advance dist. The advance comes up with the rpm but it doesnt come back down. Real slow to come back down. Its not the play in the dist shaft and the gear is good. Could it be the cam moving forward?

Is the advance moving freely? Have you pulled the dizzy apart and looked?

Yes. The dist had too much end play so I shimmed the shaft and it appeared to take care of it. Problems still there. Could it be the thrust plate came loose?

did you put in the trust plate? if so did you check the end play? if you did how much did it have? and if it was good why should it have movement?

Motor was built by local builder. Not a cheap motor. It must be the dist, I have replaced all the electrorics. I tell you that the advance looks to be working just fine, but it is really slow to come back to inital settings. 15 seconds slow.

What springs and bushings are in the dizzy? Is the RPM is staying up too?

One silver (medium) and one Heavy both MSD and the big black bushing. If the engine builder put the gear in the wrong spot on the dist would that cause the cap and rotor to be out of phase? It appears that the gear is about 10 degree's off from what the original was.

The heavy..screen door spring is silver. The light springs are silver...the med. springs are lite blue.
I do not know if any of this is your issue but lose ALL of the heavy silver.
All light silver or one light silver + one light blue is the ticket.

Lem after looking at the dist I noticed that the end of the shaft after the gear that goes into the oil pump has been ground smaller (by hand on a sander I guess) could I have a alignment problem and when I lock down the dist the shaft flexs and that is causing interferance with the mechanical advance not wanting to retard back to initial advance?

Get a new dist. or at least a good used one.

I had a similar problem on a 460 with a MSD dizzy. Never got it solved though. Sold the engine. Basically I could set the idle and then the timing and the idle would be sky high. Reset idle and put it in gear and it would want to die. The advance springs were suspected to be waaaaay off like Lem has stated. Basically the load in gear was enough to get the springs to close and drop timing and get it to want to die. It was a B$%^H to tune!

The more I get into this engine and find things that a good performance builder would never let happen. I am not happy with the things I have found. I will figure it out.

some msd stuff sucks,you and me are the lucky ones that get some of it.lol. i had a msd dist,new from summit,with the shaft out of round.i'd sent it back but the guy it was for was in a hurry and said "hell it runs good".the damn thing didnt run long before it wore out to the point it started to miss.you could see the cap moving on that pos when the car was runnung!LOL.i need a new one but hate to buy msd.