Distributor advance
 

Just wondering if any of you advance your distributor timing or leave it how it is.

leave it at 12* BTDC

If you dont mind me asking why?

Advanced timing will make you misfire. The time you should really alter timing is when a tuner is doing it for you while you are having your car tuned, due to an engine build or installation of a turbo or supercharger.

I was told from my mechanic that it only lets you rotate it to a safe limit. Hence the length of the area where it can be rotated. Say i had 84 mm bore, a head shaved to the limit and port and polished parts to name a few... would it be ok to advance the timing at least a little?

Yeah, it only lets you rotate it to a safe limit, but it will still misfire or knock or whatever if it's advanced too far.

If you want to advance it, do it to the point where it's not knocking or misfiring, but if you turn the distributor anymore it will be. You want to advance it as much as possible without causing the engine to knock or misfire (not sure what word i'm looking for).

Now we're getting somewhere. I guess my real question is, why would they make it adjustable? Especially since if its gonna be professionally tuned it'll be done through a computer anyway.

That's a good question. I've actually been wondering the same thing.

I guess it might be because every engine is different from each other in slightly different ways, even if they are suppose to be the same engine. Maybe those differences could cause the timing to be different on different engines even when the distributors are set to the exact same position, so they made it adjustable so that you can compensate from those differences.

That makes sense. One other thing, Changing the ignition timing would advance the spark, so would it make sense to advance the camgear as well to bring the valves up to par? Im just trying to figure things out because i just got a skunk2 cam and camgear and i dont know what to do with it?

The cam gear adjusts a different kind of timing, timing in relation between the crankshaft and the camshaft.

The distributor connects to the end of the cam gear, so if you turn the distributor you are only affecting the timing relationship between the cam and ignition. If you adjust the cam gear you are adjusting both the cam and the ignition timing simultaneously in their relationship to the crankshaft.

I have no idea what the adjustable cam gear is used for and/or under what circumstances you would want to adjust it, but I do know that you don't want to adjust it unless you really know what you're doing.