It is definitely worrth it -- probably the quickest, most effective thing you can do to your car. You may or may not need to run premium gas, it will be trial and error. Personally, I would probably go to about 14 degrees to start.
The reason I suggested 14 degrees, was I've seen some cars not always respond better with more timing, past a certain point. You probably won't know without a dyno, but something to keep in mind while you're playing with it.
I've always started with 14 degrees, and found it easier to move timing up than to start higher and move it down.
Adam tell me about it. i run 15* in winter. now on a 110* day, (running at no more than 200*), i get pinging at 12*. gonna... hack- cough...back it down to 10. when i had backed it off to 12* in spring, it felt a little stronger than at 15. but i was probably standing on it a little more confidentally since i was not worried about ping. BTW, my butt dyno does not work very well.
the only consolation is listening to the problems the SN95 guys are having in the heat.
and you are right on - need a dyno to really know for sure. but the ping method works pretty decent.
dont go to crazy with it you could fry your pistons if you put it to high but i have seen people run 15 for years so you should be safe it is just what your car likes.
dont go to crazy with it you could fry your pistons if you put it to high but i have seen people run 15 for years so you should be safe it is just what your car likes.
that is right. no two cars are the same. some can run 15* with no issues. some cant get over 10. things like carbon build up, hot spots, compression, the plugs and so on, all affect whether someone is likely to experience pinging with XXX degrees of timing.
there is no magic number - you gotta play with it.
to address the octane part of your first post: higher octane burns slower. so you can run more timing with more octane. for me, i go as high as i can on 87, since i cant afford to fill the beast with more expensive gas. but if you were to time it with 87, and then run higher octane later, you could retime it with more timing. just be sure to stay at that octane, or you will ping if you run lower octane with that higher timing.
Dont forget its all about personal preference like what you are going to do with the car. If its a daily driver and you dont have much dough or that many mods, then I say dont go past 10*. I really dont think its worth having to worry about pinging, premiun gas, and so on if its a daily driver. I have 2 mustangs and I dont mess with anything like that on the daily driver because I love how it just runs no matter what and that I can dump in the crappiest gas and not have to worry. But if your going to race it or you have the extra time and money to keep putting in good gas and fidget with the timing then go for it. For reliability sake though, its not worth the extra 5-10 horses.
when i first got teh car the timing was set at 8* and i could run the cheap **** then i bumped it up to 14* and it spark knocked like ****** so now i run at least 89