timing

I have read a lot of 351w build ups. Mostly i see 18 degrees initial with 20 degrees of mechanical advance. so 38 degrees total. Thats what I run and my engine loves it. Because i have a 8.2 to 1 compression I can actually run low grade and not ping. I like to run High grade however due to my nitrous. I would do as the other post say though. bump it from 14 degrees up 1 degree at a time.
 
got the timing pretty close today shes still off a little, at around 210-2400 RPM its sputtering and then the same at around 2700 inbetween all that its good. so i think my timing need to be adjsuted a bit better...im a newb tho

also my advancced timing on my distribtor is not workin we had to block the line to get the car to run right, i dont know whats goin on with that
 
Don't set it for base timing, set it for total advance and let the base timing fall wherever. I locked my advance out on my dizzy and I set it at 3000 rpms and then check it at 7k. Mine loses 2 degrees past 5k so I set it at 38 at 3,000. 36 is what my car runs best at. The initial doesn't matter much unless you run into starting trouble. If you do you can run a start/retard or try to curve it. You want max advance early (by about 2500) if you want to run a timing curve. This of course is for Non-EFI cars only.
 
I hate vacuum advance. I'd leave it unhooked and let it work off the centrifugal advance. Set it at about 36 degrees at 5000 rpms and see where the initial falls when you let it back to idle. It'd be nice for you to pick up an MSD Dizzy. They're easily adjustable whatever curve you want and no vacuum advance, all centrifugal