Timing question

Last trip to the strip I had noticed it started slightly harder. It is supposed to be locked out at 28 degrees (it has a 10 degree start retard). It was locked at 32. Hmmmm. I reset it to 28. Made 2 more passes and loaded it on the trailer. Back in the garage I pulled the distributor to check the bronze gear. Typical slight wear, pin looked fine. I restabbed it and reset to 28. It sat in garage for 2 weeks being ocassionally fired off for a warm up to rotate valve spring pressure. Yesterday I swapped carb jetting slightly, fired off the car and began checking things for this weekend's racing. Timing again was at 32. ???? I reset it to 28 and was sure to put a slight more "umph" into the distributor hold down.

What the heck could be causing this slight advancement? Could the dizzy hold down just not have been clamping enough? Should I be looking deeper?


Motor is fresh.... like 50 miles on it since rebuild. Half of which is drag and return road. Running 20w50 VR1, Wix filter. Car is not down on power, in fact it is quicker than ever.

I'd be watching the Gear and shear pin......

But it could be timing chain stretch?

I will pull the dizzy again and recheck the gear. It has a new, true double roller, billet gear chain. I though when a chain stretched it would retard the timing. I had seen this before in my Chevy days before I became enlightened. Does the timing slightly advance with chain stretch in a Ford?

Maybe a Chevy "pal" is tweaking under my hood to try to slow me down when I'm not looking.

mark the dist make sure its not moving. Dampner ok, cam gear loose, just throwing ideas.
You still on E85? Mine really likes the timing with it.

what balancer?

I had toyed with the idea of running E85 or even going over to alky but after running a mid 10 on the motor right out of the box a mile high I decided to keep it at what I got for now. The car's not certed and I wasn't planning to go that far. I'm content to run mid to low 10's motor up here knowing that I'm borderline requiring cert at a regular altitude track without the bottle open.


The balancer is an SFI Professional Products. Nothing looks to be rotating there. The engine really does gain a few degrees of advance when I notice this. See it starts nice at 18 (due to -10 start retard) but at 22 it is noticably harder to start. You can hear the advance when you go to fire it off.

Also the car runs best at 28 total. A few more and it looses ET and mph.

I repulled the dizzy. Same story. Everything is tight. Bonnze gear looks fine. Pin is nice and straight. I felt of everything for looseness or something that didn't look or feel right and I could not find anything. Restabbed it again, set it to 28 and fired up fine. Idled for a bit then whacked it a few times. All good.

Maybe the hold down just wasn't snug enough. I guess if it was something serious I'll find it soon enough right? Sheesh...

BIGDOG466 wrote:mark the dist make sure its not moving. Dampner ok, cam gear loose, just throwing ideas.
You still on E85? Mine really likes the timing with it.

I'm just running a 347...so results may vary...but how much timing does it like with the E85? I just switched over at the end of last year, and haven't really had a chance to experiment yet. They've also already cancelled racing for here next weekend because of the massive rains we've had...and more on the way, so test & tune looks to be out of the question for a bit.

I'm not looking to set the world on fire...but want to find the sweet spot for the engine if I can. I've never run anything but gas...so, this is all new. I appreciate the help I've gotten on here so far...and recommendations will get me close to begin...and I can fine tune the combo from there.

Thanks for the help guys!

Mine picked up a bunch @ 34 I havent ran any higher yet because of the rains. I would set up for around 32 /34 make sure your dist is phased in and
got a good ign set up.

Jon,
I had a buddy of mine have timing issues and he would check it and one time it would be 37 next 32
back and forth I marked the balancer and the outside part had separated from the rubber and was moving.
It was one from Summit. I told him it was a proform LOL.

My dizzy is a mallory unilite. Its a carry over from the stroker Cleveland 4V that was in the car when I bought it. I pulled it again last night just to be extra sure. Although it has torx head screws that you set to tune the mechanical advance and mine are set up for none, I noticed you could - with some muscle- get the rotor to move a little bit while the shaft didn't. So I welded the f'er up. No movement now! Hopefully that was what was going on.
Just wanted to follow up.