View single post by Judson Manning
 Posted: 07-08-2007 02:32 pm
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Judson Manning



Joined: 03-14-2005
Location: Atlanta, Georgia USA
Posts: 406
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John,

I don't think your specific new problem is in the carbs.  When I rebuilt Ron Earp's engine last year we found a similar timing problem.  It turned out that when the distributor was tested it was firing all over the place. 

MSD is known for their "Multiple-Spark-Discharge".  Translation:  A single spark doesn't fire at a 10^BTDC, rather the first one fires at 10^ then several more over something like the next 30^ of rotation. 

A really cool thing to watch is uncap the distributor and rotate the engine by hand.  If you watch the underside of the cap where the terminals are you will see a brilliant lightning show of dancing 2"-3" sparks.

The point is:  I think your distributor has a minor wobble due to a worn bushing or slightly out of aligned reluctor.  This minor alignment problem is multiplied 100x by the multiple 40,000 Volt sparks resulting in a stray misfire.

Richening the carbs to clean-up a firing problem is a very common trick but IMHO not the best solution.  In my experience Spec5-9 is ridiculously too rich and I've had much better luck with Spec10.  Of course I'm also running a brand new Lucas 45DM distributor.

Judson