1988 turbo 331 TW heads mspnp2

droopie85gt said:

Why run locked timing? That's so 1960. How modified is your car? If it's not blown or have some huge roller cam, I'd mimic a stock timing curve. There's no set rule, each engine wants what it wants. Same with the idle AFR. I played with both until I got the most solid idle with the best vacuum signal.

On my 85 with a 302 and Stage 2 TFS Cam, it idles best with about 25-28 degrees at idle. Right off idle it drops down to about 20 degrees, then ramps quickly up to 36 all in by 2500 (5 speed car, an auto may not like that much that quick) Total timing is pretty easy to find by it not pinging. Any reasonable head should probably not need more than 36 total. It may need less.

I see the turbo. Still, idle and high vacuum timing has nothing to do with boost. Just make sure you tune your tables when you're in boost to remove timing to a safe amount. You'll probably find quite a bit of power and fuel economy by maximizing timing in the non-boost areas.

Then, there's vacuum advance. When the engine is cruising in a light load, high vacuum scenario, it can take a LOT more timing. I think my timing goes all the way to 46 degrees in some of the areas I identified as cruise areas in the map. (I run old Holley Commander 950 setup). I also run as lean as 16.5 in these areas. The changes made a HUGE difference in the torque helping it pull at light throttle in 5th and really helped the mileage cruising down the interstate.

The big thing is to make sure you have exact TDC marked on your balancer then synch what the computer says the timing is to what the engine shows. I'm not sure how that's down on a MS, but on the Holley I just set all the timing to 24 and then checked with a timing light, by revving it up to 2500, 3500 and 5000 to make sure it's not wandering.

I had that same steering wheel on an 83 Regal! I had the CLUB on it, but didn't like the way it indented the foam, so I would hook it thru the spokes. The cut the spoke and stole my car!

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a91what said:

He set the timing to a fixed value in the software then adjusted the distributor to get to that value... just like you would pull the spout to fix the timing with a stock ecu.

Now that he has the timing set he can change it back to 'use table' and run the timing curve he has programmed.

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a91what said:

OK so i see some things that needed some adjusting, do you have the WIFi up yet???

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a91what said:

Lean idle makes the exhaust note deeper and more aggressive, I will take a look when I get a minute.
How does she idle better? Still hunting?

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