i keep having to adjust timing. wtf?

General karthief said:

Ahhh, on second thought go ahead, smack the tar outta yourself, you probably deserve it for something we don't know about.

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probably true

mostsmooth said:

im hoping that the problem was just related to the regulator dumping fuel into the vacuum system and this new regulator will solve that, i have driven it a couple of times now with no issue. fingers crossed.

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crossing my fingers didnt work. drove it to work today and it was acting up again. drives fine if im not driving aggressively. if i get on it (lets say more than half throttle), it acts like its running on only 7 or 6 cylinders. i will leave it alone and drive it a few more times and get a few hundred miles on it since hooking the battery back up see what changes if anything

General karthief said:

When you say moving, what do you mean?

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i may have been right the first time by mistake after all when i said the timing was moving.

been driving the car to work, runs ok for normal driving, but any aggressive throttle causes sputtering bogging maybe some popping etc.

today i did a bunch of testing.

any timing checks were done with a hot engine and SPOUT disconnected.

i took her for a ride and got her warmed up. ran ok until i tried to get on it.
checked the timing, was at about 18 btdc. last i set it, i set it to 13/14. i set it once again to 13/14

i took off the MSD cap and rotor (couple months old) and put my old accel rotor and cap back on. car seemed to run a little better, but still not where it should be. didnt sputter quite as much, but was still a dog if i tried to get on it.
left accel cap on and put the MSD rotor on, seemed to run a little better, but still a dog.
next step was me disconnecting the MSD/Vortech ignition box and see what that did. as i was disconnecting the connectors, one of the wires came out of the plug. i was like, holy crap, i just discovered the problem (or just one of many problems). we will call this wire the loose wire, even though the wire is fine and its the female connector on the wire that is coming out of the plug. the loose wire is unfortunately on the car harness not the MSD harness.
i eliminated the rotors/caps from being part of the problem in my opinion.

for those not familiar, the car harness plugs into one of the MSD/Vortech plugs, and the other MSD/vortech plugs plugs into the ignition coil where the car harness would normally plug into.

i disconnected the MSD/Vortech box altogether and plugged the car harness into the ignition coil and made sure i pushed the loose wire in all the way to where it should be. took the car for a spin and it ran great it seems.

then i reconnect the MSD/Vortech box to see if part of my problems were the box or the loose wire. took the car for a spin and it ran great again. if i had to say one or the other was better, i would say it ran a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny bit better without the box, but i have no real way of telling and they could easily be just as good either way.

i get back home and for fun i check the timing again, and its at about 18 again. wtf?

i put it back to 13/14 and took it for another spin and put it through its paces. it ran 'ok'-ish. definitely worse than 18-ish.

i put the timing back to 18-ish and took her out again and again, she ran great

i left it at 18 and left the MSD/Vortech box disconnected.

i have a mark on the distributor cap and the upper intake. the distributor cap isnt moving (so i assume the distributor itself isnt moving either)

i plan to go through the various checklists in the near future, and see if there are any codes (i dont have a CEL on, but maybe there can be codes still? or maybe the CEL is dead)

timing is at about 22 with the SPOUT connected.

just posting this here in case somebody notices what could be a problem that makes the timing move.

as far as the car running great at 18, as long as it stops moving, and the car is happy at 18, then that isnt a problem, right?

thanks for reading if you got this far