Spark Advance

DANA BIZZELL

DANA BIZZELL

Senior Member
My 31 Coupe cranks and idles good, Power good but can not tell any difference past five notches on spark advance. Is this normal. When lever is up against distributor slot and down against slot.
Thanks
Dana
 
That could be normal. My stock engine runs down the road best about 3/4 of the way down on the spark lever. If I pull it full down I can't tell any difference, so I push it back to 3/4, so I don't run with too much advance and destroy the bearings or pistons.
 
Are the points and timing set correctly ? We just talked about this again in the above thread.
On most vehicles with the lever up the engine idles very slowly. Pull the lever half way and the idle speed should increase. Pull the lever down fully and most engines will start to roll and idle a little rougher.
I too am one that doesn't think these monsters need 40º of advance. Once started I pull the lever to 9:00 to 8:30 and leave it there for 99.9999999% of the time. Mine doesn't make any difference that I can notice at full advance and I can't notice any sign of detonation, but, I don't run it there anyway. I've not bothered to check, but, I'm thinking 9:00 is about 25-30º and 8:30 may be about 30-35º, thats enough for me.
 
People can run the spark lever where ever they choose . I've ran full advance at speed since I was a teenager and it has never hurt any of my model A's . The damage usually occurs if the engine is lugging in the higher gears when too much spark advance is applied. My 5.9 BF heads handle spark advance as well as the original heads and the extra power that they give, I never have lugging problems. People that run gear ratios higher than 3.78 have to be more carefull to avoid lugging and timing knocks .
 
Timing and points are dead on, was just wondering about extra five notches on lever.
thanks for all the good input.
Dana
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top