Just fired up and run break in oil in new engine and I'm not able to set timing correctly. I have an MSD #8517 dist and MSD 6AL ignition. Everything started right up and sounded very good while cam break in procedure was happening. My timing light has an advance dial, to run and sound great it was reading about 55-60 degrees advance on the dial to get my mark at 8 degrees on crank timing mark. Now that the break in oil was changed and inner valve springs installed, I am not able to get base timing set correctly. When timing is set to where it sounds good the engine seems sluggish, good but sluggish. I have tried to adjust dist slightly advanced and retarded and it backfires through the exhaust. I'm wondering if the pick-up in my dist may be a problem, or if thats even possible?
There is a "gremlin" Phenomenon with this ignition set up vs. timing light. Larry had a thread that I will try to find for you. I had similar gremlin issues when I built mine and broke in..thought I was a tooth off after messing with it. stand by...
If, for some reason the magnetic pickup wires are reversed in polarity, the engine will run very advanced. The MSD side of the box has green and violet wires. The magnetic pick up has two black wires, one with a violet tracer, the other with an orange tracer. The easiest thing to remember is violet should not go to violet. That means the black/orange magnetic pick up wire should go to the violet box wire, and the black/violet pick up wire should go to the green box wire. See if you can check that.
Yeah, that is what I figured, but it was worth checking. The only other thing I can think of is if there is a big intake vacuum leak because of an intake to head misalignment, the engine will require a lot of advance to run. We have had a few members with this problem. Are your heads and block decked a lot?
I looked at pick up and wires and they are correct. My block has zero deck and new Stg1TE heads. Car idles ok and timing can be adjusted, however it backfires out the exhaust if advanced or retarded to much.
Did you adjust the mechanical timing. What bushing did you use? Springs? You are using the SP2 intake, correct?
You should be able to get to 14-16* initial for 32-34* total timing. Very strange. Are you sure of your timing mark on your balancer. Is it a stock balancer?
Well, That's all I have for now. Have to give this more thought. See if you can take a vacuum reading. See if it's pulling appropriate vacuum for the cam you are running.
I really don't think this cam will pull much vaccum, it's .584 intake and .611 exhaust solid lifter with rollers 1.65 What kind of vaccum?
If it is a mostly race application I would lock the distrbutor out and not have to worry about it. You are not going to see very much vacumn at all with that.
i have not had time to go look, but, I could have sworn Larry had posted somehting about the Pro Billet and not getting accurate timing with certain lights/ It was a while back, Larry, do you recall what I am thinking about?
It sounds like you have a bad distributor or it is out of phase. This happened with my car at start up. I have the MSD digital 6 ignition and a JW converted distributor with an MSD pickup. The distributor worked well on the dyno with an MSD 7L box but when I installed the engine in my car it was messed up. The engine would run at idle but when I got it around 2,000 rpms it would backfire out the exhaust and die. I tried an MSD distributor that JW had and dropped it in and the engine ran fine. We then took the distibutor that JW built and retarded the reluctor a few degrees at a time and got the engine to run better but it still backfired at around 5,000 rpm's. I then ordered and installed the MSD 8552 ready to run distributor and the engine now runs flawlessly. I would borrow an MSD distributor from someone and try it. Tim
I once borowed a dial-back light (summit) from a garage friend and thought I set my timing on 16* initial. While I was busy with the loose dist I had another guy check the light. But somehow I just didnt feel it so I checked with a more trusted regular one and whoops, I was only at 5 :eek2: Turns out the dial-back light wasnt all that sensitive on the dial. It hardly moved the mark on the balancer when I turned the dial between 4-16. (mine was a regular HEI btw..)
Okay so the timing light is an issue! Thanks to all who suggested to try a different light. The problem with the backfire out the exhaust at times is #3 cylinder is not firing. Called MSD today and they recommend I try a new cap and rotor, if not that then they said the pick-up is possibly the problem. I'll be after a new dist if that's the case. Thanks to all for the great support, I'll keep everyone posted on the correct fix.
Just wanted to thank everyone involved. My dist had a problem, I sent it back to MSD and they installed a new rectafire and pick-up, car runs great now will post new timeslip in a couple of weeks.
