I've been getting some pinging under acceleration lately, so thjought I'd better check the timing. When I checked it with a fairly primitive Heathkit timing light, the timing mark was about an inch and a half from the little indicator with the hole in it for TDC, etc.

So I retarded it as much as I could, but the slotted guide for the distributor bolt will only let me get it far enough so that the timing mark is about a sixteenth of an inch from the edge of the indicator.

What do I do? I haven't driven it yet, maybe this amount of retardation will be fine. If I wanted to get less advance though, would I have to lift the whole distributor up off its gear and then set it back down? I don't want to mess thing up.

This is a 225 Super Six with a Petronix ignition in a 71 D100.

As always, your sage expertise is appreciated.

Joe

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Joe Hoppe

71 D100 225 Super Six 727 AT on 2008 Crown Vic CopCar frame

64 Valiant Wagon 225 904 AT 3:23 8.75"

with timing you won't need that much, you might have some bad gas and it's just compaining.

Your timing 'tab' should have some scratches in it to tell you how many degrees of initial advance you have.

If you move it back to the 'hole' or TDC you probably will solve the pinging but your gas mileage and throttle response may suffer to a certain degree (cold starts might be better....)

Anyhow, one of the best proceedures to determine your best timing is to just take it for a test drive, and take a ratchet and socket with you for the distributor hold down bolt. You can either set the initial timing at TDC and advance it gradually, or leave it where it is and advance or retard it as needed.

I usually go for the set to TDC or close and drive it: up a hill under WOT, highway cruise, 'a variety' of terrain to see where it's pinging/rattling at. If no ping, pull over someplace safe loosen the distributor and give it a slight twist counter clockwise(advance), just a little, drive it again, no ping advance it again until it does ping, when it does back it off to the previous amount. More 'methodical' version would be to run it up to TDC and see how much initial you have with each change, so you have a 'timing tab' number/mark to go back to with each change.

One thing to note: if your damper has slipped, you might get some 'wandering' timing mark issues, or if the vacuum advance pod has an issue this might happen too...

good luck, this thing happens all the time in my area, where our gas stations get 'discounts' for buying 'surplus' oxygenated gas from the northern 'smoggable' areas, so one week we have good 100% Regular, next week we get 90% oxygenate Regular with 10% Ethanol....

We are supposed to have mandatory pump fuel quality testing by the state, but they don't do it regularly enough and they consider a 5% margin of error on the RON+MON/2 method to be close enough (so how about buying regular that's only 83 octane....)



-D.Idiot

man D.I here in s.u we have 85 as our reg and it 1.75 a gal but i cant complain because we have no laws when it comes to cars

I can't get it to retard to TDC or anywhere near it because it runs out of space in the holder.

So what do I do?

sorry if I wasn't clear earlier,

Joe

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Joe Hoppe

71 D100 225 Super Six 727 AT on 2008 Crown Vic CopCar frame

64 Valiant Wagon 225 904 AT 3:23 8.75"

You may have already retarded it enough to stop the pinging so give it a test drive.
If you still have pings then you need to loosen the bolt on the bottom of the distributor and move the slotted plate. That is right, there is another slot and bolt on the bottom of the distributor which may allow you to move the plate so the top bolt does not bottom out in the slot.
DD

Looks like I'm running about 15-12 degrees of advance now and it's sounding better.

Sometimes it's hard to tell, though, there's still some dash rattlin going on in the old truck.


Does this sound like a good number for advance?


Thanks,

Joe

_________________
Joe Hoppe

71 D100 225 Super Six 727 AT on 2008 Crown Vic CopCar frame

64 Valiant Wagon 225 904 AT 3:23 8.75"