Originally Posted by r16678

I just had the carb rebuilt by Rod's Carb shop in Phoenix

Originally Posted by calwldlife

i still would suspect the carb.

seems someone did aswell, you had carb worked on.

you don't do yourself any good keeping info to yourself.

Originally Posted by blk79nj

Hello, I know this was covered before. I attempted to search for this but I was unsuccessful, so I decided to post it.

I have a bone stock 79 L48, automatic with the stock HEI distributor with a new cap and rotor. I have had the car for a while, and it runs OK on the highway, but.. when you get into the secondaries.. it boggs down.

So I want to get it to run better, so I started with the timing. I have a craftsman timing light, the kind with dial on the back. After showing my son how it works... I had him sit in the car and give me some RPM's so i could take some readings. This is of course with the vacuum advance line removed and plugged with the engine warm. Here is what I came up with:

I set the initial to 6 based on some old Chilton's manual I have...

650(idle)=6
1000=10
1500=14
2000=20
2500=21
3000=23
3500=27
4000=27

Does this look correct, or is there something wrong? If this is good...I'm going to move on to the carb. If this needs some work, my plan is to fix this first then move on.

Any help is appreciated.

Originally Posted by r16678

what would be wrong with the carb that would cause the timing to need an extra advance

Originally Posted by blk79nj

FOLLOW UP

Just got back from vacation at the beach.

I went out, and bumped the initial timing up to 15 degrees without the vacuum advance attached. Gave it some RPMs, and the total is 36 at about 3300 or so.

I then reattached the vacuum advance can, the idle increased, so I decreased it down to about 650.

I then checked the timing again, and it was at 27 with the vacuum advance attached, so it's giving me about 12 degrees.

Doing the math... 36 mechanical + 12 vacuum gives me 48. I kn