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8 hours ago, Last Indian said:

360, sorry, stupid me I forgot to write down your shipping info and I understand why it's gone. So if you can one more time please? I'll keep watch and let you know when I have it! My mistake!

Ill send it via PM sir, thank you again my friend.

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Another show i missed...but i hope to have some videos i can send to ringo to post for me..LOL stay tuned! seriously tune yer stuff! LOL Onadaga or bust! 

 

IMG_5161[1].JPG

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So, I'm gonna say this and I haven't had the opportunity to say this since I was blessed by Justa a couple of years ago.

 

I'M SPEECHLESS !!!

 

I got a box today that I wasn't expecting so soon, I opened the box to find not only a Craftsman timing gun but an added bonus that I've never held in my hands before or used but knew about and have been intrigued by how to properly use one. A dwell meter! Now most of you don't know this but may also have this newfound addiction....as I grow older, I find myself loving collecting old things like, car parts, signage, and OMG especially old tools! INDIAN? You've put a huge grin on my face and really made my weekend! I know its the simple things right? Now I am already geeked out by the timing gun but I'm over the moon with the original boxes and instruction manuals and patina on the items that you sent me. If anyone else is interested I'll post up pics of the Sears Roebuck box for the timing gun. Its all so very cool. I want to put it in glass display cases and put it on the wall!

 

Thank you Gary, you've gained a friend for life sir!

dwell%20and%20timing_zpsoutilvnt.jpg

 

 

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I so glad you're pleased, I hope they work and serve you well as they did me. I cherish the memories that I made with them. All the years of racing, all the years of tuning some incredible machines. These are forever a part of me and I hope you make some great ones for you with them!

  

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Daaaamn! nice car rocket! Dont let my pics fool ya though i cant afford a vette! LOL My buddy lets me cruise his...alone. He knows i only drive it like he is sitting next to me. But when he IS sitting next to me,well it is his Peer pressure pushing my right foot down LOL  

Way to go go Gary! thats what THIS site is all about! well done sir! 

"indymanjoe in joe carrier clothing LOL" 

Randy you are not alone i find myself with a love of old tools and craftsmanship. Look at the chrome on that light! Bakelight knobs heavy duty shop stuff! Tools you can pass on to the younger generations. Of course nowadays they dont need them. 

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So this is for Last Indian, thought I would make a quick video showing your timing gun back in service once again in order to make a happy Pontiac owners car just that much faster. Thank you again.

 

 

 

Edited by 360Rocket
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Car is still running like crap but I am closing in on it. So with some research I've learned that my HEI between vacuum and mechanical is accounting for a total of about 35 degrees advance. With an initial timing of now 12 degrees a total of 50+ degrees of timing. Way too much. So I have capped off the vacuum advance and the car is running much stronger and I heard no pinging. I still don't know total timing as the timing tape I applied the other day fell off somehow on my way to work today. I need to get a new tape to confirm total timing and then the idle mixture screws and idle itself is kicking my ass. I'm trying to set those using a vacuum gauge with no luck so far.

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This is so awesome to watch. Two guys you've never met each other. helping one another out. I helped a good ol' boy today on the boulevard by loaning him a 3/8th drive extension so he could replace his wife's Cadillac's battery. I love to see automotive brotherhood in action. Well done gentlemen, well done! Pay it forward!

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And Frosty, I too right these days am in the mindset of pay it forward more so than in years gone by. I was in my work vehicle the other day and passed an elderly lady who was broke down in the middle of a busy intersection and mulled over the situation because I was in a work vehicle and if they knew I did what I was about to do I would most likely be out of a job. Well me being me, I turned around and got that lady back up and running and on her way.  Her truck had no water, no oil, and a loose battery terminal but we were able to resource the things we needed.  think its time for the world to change its thought process from the self centered selfish  reality TV lifestyle and star lending a helping hand to those around them. My goals at life at this moment have shifted from wealth and gathering more toys to simplifying my life and helping those around me more.

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360, it would appear you’re headed in the right direction. it’s been awhile, so this is food for thought. Not knowing what you’ve tried and not tried I will say this. I’ll do this backwards, as usually it’s total advance minus initial, but in this case the total seams too much. So total advance should be between 36 and 40 degrees btdc. Meaning if you start with 15 or 12 degrees initial, which is reasonable, mechanical & vac should add know more than 25 to 23 degrees, as you implied. Carb tuning is a little more precarious because it will change timing some and vice versa because of idle speed. I would usually set the idle down until, hearing wise, the engine was struggling a bit. Then about half to three quarters turn up on the throttle screw. Then each idle screw went the same way, down till a blurb in the idle then up a half turn. I never found vac gages to be very helpful. 
Also with the HEI, have you checked the spark plugs, gap erosion, etc? What about the coil, they can make a big difference, as can spark plug wires. 

A little story! I always ran a duel point distributer with full mechanical advance in my Z. One nice Sunday afternoon I tuned up the Z, drove it Monday to work. That morning on the freeway I encountered an idiot in a CRX Honda that thought he was going to give 600 hp a run in a somewhat light morning traffic, as well as jeopardizing others in the process. So to end it before it started I downshifted and punched it. This car being what it was, squawk tires at 50 & was gone! For about 300ft! This is where it gets embarrassing! Suddenly the car backfired violently about 5 or six times. So much so the the car shook and when I looked in my rear view mirror cars behind me were get out of the way of the big ball of smoke! In that 300 ft the car had gone from 50 to 85 or so. So at that point the car was dead and coasting up about a 75’ rise overpass, it coasted about a mile and stoped. Like any other idiot I got out opened the hood and looked at a motor that looked perfectly fine! It obviously would not start so I looked some more. Finally I saw it the spark plug wire were all as taunt as a guitar string. The distributor had spun, must have forgotten to tighten it! So I grabbed it rotated it back, hit the key and it started first crank, but didn’t run good at all. I nursed it about an other mile to work and parked it by our fleet garage. Later I came out with a timing light to check timing among other things. Popped the distributor cap, say what, the side of the rotor was blown out, it was just flopping around. Put a new rotor on, timed it, seemed ok! Till I drove home, anything over 35 mph and the motor ran like crap! For the next three weeks I went through the motor, compression, points, condenser, etc nothing, but at about 50 under load there was a miss, a shutter. On week four I found it at night! I opened the hood in my drive, being dark out the engine was a light show, rev it up it was a bigger light show. Every single spark plug wire was fractured internally and when loaded everything would bleed to ground. The worst part of this was two years later the real damage reared its head. Two years later the motor started huffing oil out the breathers and exhaust big time! A compression test showed 5 & 7 at only 85 lbs. pulled the motor both 1st & 2nd compression rings on 5 & 7 were broken in no less than at least 5 places on every ring.
So check it all!

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ouch ouch ouch, that's hard story to tell. So I "think" this will be an easy fix as soon as I get another timing tape sticker on the pulley. The car was running perfectly except for the top end pinging so now that I have discovered the HEI throwing so much advance at my total timing. I also will measure the diameter of my balancer to make sure I am using the correct timing tape as well. last fix I took the car for a quick spin and it felt real strong but when I shut it off and attempted to rerstart, it was struggling to start which should mean I have too much initial advance now. I hope to have it wrapped up sometime this week and then back on to restoring the bottom half of the car again. I'm also trying to get a bead on some 15X8 rally 2's for sale so I can widen the foot pattern on the back tires. Spinnin' ain't winnin' they say.

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Well she's now dialed in to @36 to 38 degrees total timing and running fairly smooth. I tried to get it down to 32 degrees but I just couldn't get the engine to smooth out and give me a good idle. Feel like I got the idle mixture screws and idle where it needs to be. I need to let her completely sit and cool and then start it again to see how the cold start characteristics work out. I wouldn't think that the timing, or mixture screws would effect cold start and I wouldn't think I would need to re adjust the electric choke either? Thoughts?

Oh and I guess they don't make timing tape like they used to. after about 20 minutes of the engine running while I was tuning the tape melted and came flying off in 2 pieces. lol.

IMG_0405_zpsleeu9c3a.jpg

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360, sounds good, fingers crossed for cold start. Never used the tape, but I can see it would be a problem! 

This probably isn’t something you would want to do, but I mention it anyway. I always took my harmonic balancer off or bought a new one and then did the following. I would take the balancer chuck it up in a degree chuck, take a tool bit with a sharp point and then cut about .015 wide X .015 deep degree marks in the balancer. I would go up to 50 degrees. So you might find a local machine shop and see if they could do that.

Justa thought!?

Edited by Last Indian
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  • 4 weeks later...

So if there is anyone out there learning about tuning old cars at my expense, here is another fun fact for you. Vacuum advance is NOT included in total timing and you DO need to keep your vacuum advance hooked up and I'll copy and paste the reason why:

Now connect the vacuum advance from the carburetor to the distributor and read the timing on the harmonic balancer while revving the engine to 2,800 rpm. This number will now be greater than 34 degrees with the addition of the vacuum advance. Let’s say it now reads 49 degrees, which would mean the vacuum advance is worth another 15 degrees. These are typical numbers.

First, let’s look at the mechanical advance portion of the timing—the 34 degrees total. This is determined by the weights and springs spinning around inside the distributor. This establishes the amount of timing the engine will see at wide open throttle (WOT). As you are probably aware, at part throttle the engine will create a certain amount of vacuum in the intake manifold. This is because the throttle is mostly closed and the engine is pulling against this restriction. Because the throttle is mostly closed, very little air is moving into the cylinders. So at light cruise, such as running down the highway, the engine is making much less power than it would at this same rpm at WOT.

With less air and fuel in each cylinder, the air-fuel mixture is not as densely packed compared to WOT. This less-dense mixture requires more ignition timing to complete the combustion because it takes longer to complete the combustion process. So we need a way to increase the amount of timing based on the load on the engine. This is how vacuum advance works. At part throttle, high manifold vacuum moves the diaphragm in the vacuum advance canister on the distributor to add more timing. But at WOT, the vacuum drops to near zero and vacuum advance is removed and the total timing then is established by the initial plus the mechanical advance.

So there are significant advantages to retaining the vacuum advance on your distributor.

 

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That’s actually why I liked duel points, all mechanical advance. You could set them up to do exactly what you wanted on a distributor machine. You would change weight sizes and springs to get what and where you wanted it. It takes a lot more work, but well worth it!

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  • 3 months later...

So maybe another tuning lesson learned? I'll ask you guys opinion first. So I've fought and I've fought, and I've fought with the carb/timing issue for far too long and I figure I'm fixated on one thing while the issue is quite something else so I decide to wave the white flag and get a fresh set of eyes on this tuning issue and I take the GTO to my local speed shop to have a pro give it a once over. So he pulls out a modern fancy star trek looking timing gun with LED readouts and dials and whistles on it and proceeds to show me that what I thought was 14 degrees of timing was actually set at 21 degrees of initial timing and 41 degrees of total timing. wow so in your opinion are my eyes that bad? or could there be a 6 degree difference between 2 different timing lights? The ride on the way home says thru the butt dyno that I picked up 50 HP with zero pinging and a much less strenuous sound coming from the starter on hot restarts. I still have some idle and off idle carb issues but that might have lead to a suspect PCV valve that I plan on replacing when I get back to work on Monday. Do I reserve trust in my trusty timing light? Or is a new set of contacts in order? 14 degrees is only 2 degrees off my timing tab so I don't think I could have been that far off, whats your thoughts?

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Sometimes the outer ring on harmonic balancer slips a lil on the rubber throwing the marks off.    Would expect the tuner would have brought this up to offer up some kind of explanation, as I'm sure he didn't work for free.  Remark your timing marks with paint to know where to get back to if needed.

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14 hours ago, 360Rocket said:

So maybe another tuning lesson learned? I'll ask you guys opinion first. So I've fought and I've fought, and I've fought with the carb/timing issue for far too long and I figure I'm fixated on one thing while the issue is quite something else so I decide to wave the white flag and get a fresh set of eyes on this tuning issue and I take the GTO to my local speed shop to have a pro give it a once over. So he pulls out a modern fancy star trek looking timing gun with LED readouts and dials and whistles on it and proceeds to show me that what I thought was 14 degrees of timing was actually set at 21 degrees of initial timing and 41 degrees of total timing. wow so in your opinion are my eyes that bad? or could there be a 6 degree difference between 2 different timing lights? The ride on the way home says thru the butt dyno that I picked up 50 HP with zero pinging and a much less strenuous sound coming from the starter on hot restarts. I still have some idle and off idle carb issues but that might have lead to a suspect PCV valve that I plan on replacing when I get back to work on Monday. Do I reserve trust in my trusty timing light? Or is a new set of contacts in order? 14 degrees is only 2 degrees off my timing tab so I don't think I could have been that far off, whats your thoughts?

360, the difference between your timing light & his digital led is a tach! The led/digital knows the rpm of the engine, so it only looks at the scored TDC mark on the harmonic, it ignores the timing tab, It times, in milliseconds 360 degrees to the next fire & wha la timing. You really don’t need it if you do two things that I suspect are your disconnect for proper timing. 
Either pull your harmonic balancer or buy a new one & take it to a shop that will set it up on a degree chuck & scribe in 50 degrees before & after TDC. This is very accurate when done right, preferably they should also check the TDC mark with the keyway first. Once this is done & reinstalled, pull #1 spark plug, using an proper type indicator get TDC of the piston. Now take the timing tab & cut it to a point where it is pointing at TDC of the harmonic balancer. Or obviously you could buy a Led digital timing light.

 

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good advice guys, I didn't even think that the harmonic could slip so another lesson learned. A light is a light, is a light. It should fire at the same time its triggered. Thanks again.

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49 minutes ago, 360Rocket said:

good advice guys, I didn't even think that the harmonic could slip so another lesson learned. A light is a light, is a light. It should fire at the same time its triggered. Thanks again.

360, you are right, light is a light, but the timing tab that the harmonic moves past can get knocked out of position. The only way to verify it’s accuracy is to do the indicator check for TDC.

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