I would like to start by saying i didnt have time to read the replies of others, But one thing i was taught by an old school engine guy here in michigan, was run it at its optimal vacuum..time it with a vac gauge and see whaat you have.. if it still dont wanna run right..i would suspect the cam not being installed correctly. with SBC's there are so many combinations of timing markers, dampners, the mix and match issue even caught up with me on my 327 in my 53..its coming out this winter to see WTF is up with it. also a timing issue
Ok John, will do it that way. On the bleeder hole WTF, there is such an animal just to make things a tad easier http://www.summitracing.com/parts/CRN-99412-1/ I know it will work fine without it because you can turn it with the plug in to, this just lets it breathe a little while doing it. Also, I have turned the engine both ways many times even with all the plugs in, turns just fine, of course harder to turn with plugs in, but point being I wasnt stating I couldnt turn it easily, just meaning that the less you have turn it CCW and the easier you can make things turn the better the odds of a positive outcome. Either way I have the process and tool in had now and will see what happens.
Well, I just drained and removed the radiator so I could get to crank bolt, pulled all the plugs, valve cover, etc... Used the piston stop, 4 times, the damn balancer is dead nuts. I screwed it in and rotated CCW till it stopped, marked it, rotated CW till it hit, marked it. Used my digital caliper to measure, then split the difference...4 times it hit 0 dead on, the other time it hit 1 degree, which was probably my error. F me, now what? Now I have not tried a regular timing light yet, only the dial light which a couple have mentioned can be off with MSD stuff, so once I get it all together I will do that. I just had to check this and know for sure.
Good now you know that your marks a accurate . Now use a regular timing light and see what you get . The old story elimate one thing at a time. Changing/adjusting more than one thing at a time leads to grey hair and frustration. BTDT !!
The MSD systems are really bad about putting interference back to a timing light. We had an engine at the shop that we could not get the timing readings to stay put and we could not get the readings to repeat themselves upon rechecking the timing. That's when we called the cats at MSD.They explained it to me as being radio frequency interference that is generated when you power the timing light from the same battery source that powers the ignition system. Such as the 12-volt battery of the car. Combining the MSD box, the magnetic pickup in the distributor and the onboard battery source you can feed a false reading into the timing light. Now the way the MSD tech had me remedy this problem was to get a timing light that is powered by two D-Cell batteries. Now I'm not sure that this is what your problem is but if you call MSD and quiz them on this they can explain it and talk you through it. Good luck !!! >>>>.
I must be missing something here... you say you set the engine to 11 degrees before TDC and drop in the dist buy pointing the rotor to #1... and you expect the timing light to say 11 degrees BTDC when you start it? First you have to fine tune the dist after you point the rotor to #1 by lining up the dist pulse/trigger wheel to the pick up and even then its only a rough setting that you get right with the timing light. Also lining up the dots on the cam and crank gear is fine for a stock engine but to get the most from your custom ground cam it should be degreed in... most of those after market cheap timing sets with multiple key ways are way off when you check em with a degree wheel and dial indicator.. my 2 cents
I am only a dumb electrician, but rather than go around in circles, I would start from scratch, find tdc. make a mark at 0 deg. set the cam and crank marks at factory position. attach a degree wheel. check that the cam physically matches the card. ( if you want more advance or retard this can be done by adjusting the crank gear, rollmaster do a good set) once this is known and accurate, then you can play with ignition. thats my 2 bobs worth. good luck
Otto, I couldnt sleep last night trying to figure this out, and finally it hit me...When I drop it in at 11, I had to adjust it so that it pointed to what my #1 post would be, so that throws that 11* out the window... Then I read your post just now confirming that. Stupid ****, but hey I guess its teaching me... So now I know TDC really is 0 on the balancer and thats good. I believe FMS427 is right about it being too much advance. I need to tear into the dist. and see but I bet its advancing 25 degrees or so I ended up recurving my duraspark distributor. Now its doing what it should. I took a ton of pics and posted the info on what I did on my build blog Duraspark Recurve hopefully it will help some others out.
Can't see pics, and I didn't read what kind of dist you have, but if it's a typical mag pulse dist, you can tell exactly when it fires by hooking up a digital voltmeter to the 2 primary wires off the pickup coil. Don't worry about polarity, it's just going to read negative if it's backward. When you rotate the housing, you will see about .4V DC when the magnet lines up with the pickup coil. That's what triggers the ignition coil to fire, and you can consider it instantaneous for an idle timing setting. So set the crank at your desired static advance and rotate the dist. housing until you read voltage at the pickup. It should be spot on. Don't worry about the spark plug tower alignment. That's a whole 'nother issue...
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