Well i understand that they are easy to adjust, as i have done many many times... At this point i need more intial advance then the distributor wants to allow. I need in the mid 20's initial, and still the total 36* at WOT. Right now, with their stock bushings, the smallest amount of travel they support is 18*, i need alot less, more like 10, or less.... how can i make this happen? Or am i stuck at locking the distributor out?

buy a spring and bushing kit from MSD for your particular dizzy and install it.

been there done that the largest bushing has 18* travel, and the smallest bushing has 28*....

I need more like 10* total travel....

i bought a moroso kit for my HEI distributor and the smallest advance curve is 10 degrees with different springs and weights on it.

Why do you need so much initial timing? Even if you have the smallest bushing in there (18*) then that leaves you with 18* initial and the 36* total that you're shooting for. Ought to be plenty on startup. You may be able to try the softer springs so that it advances a little bit while it's cranking.

un fortunately, my car needs more then 18* initial...

dont ask me why, but, the way demon said to make the carb go, she needed the 26* initial, to run properly, that is burn clean, and idle at 900rpm. with 18* initial, the car would run rich, and only idle smoothly at 1100rpm....

msd told me my only choice is a start retard module, which sucks, becuase i could have gotton a digital 7 or something for slightly more then the two are costing me...

weld up the advance slot that the pin/bushing ride in. Be sure to weld up the right end.

Have you tried less initial timing or are you just going by what the carb guys said?

this is something i acidentally have tried...

when timing was first set, we thought we had it set at 15*, but unfortunately, his timing gun was bad, and after using another, i was running at 5* initial. The car just had horrible problems with less timing... after 12* everything seemed the same, but i was trying to get rid of the off idle stumble...

This problem sounds somewhat familiar to me. I had a similar problem in that I had an engine that ran best with 22 degrees initial timing and 33 degrees total timing. For a few years I did fairly well with an HEI with the spring ends oblonged. This made it such that the mechanical advance moved forward a bit before the springs kicked in. I didn't care much for the solution, but it got the job done.

After looking around for a while for a proper solution without welding or fabricating I ended up getting a good deal on a programmable digital system. I was suspicious that more power could be had by adjusting not the starting and ending points for the mechanical advance but rather when the advance occurred. Since I was fighting just to get the basic start point and total advance right it was hard to get a great deal of say in how that advance came in. With the new system I had more power than before and concluded with an advance curve that would have been tricky to create with springs. I still found that my original figures on when to start and end the advance as well as how much advance to use were dead on.

As side benefits, the MSD digital ignitions have a built in start retard and rev limiter. Not long before I bought mine MSD came out with a road race/circle track ignition coil for this system. This was important since these systems are only supposed to be used with special low resistance coils. The only coil they originally made for it was designed for Pro Stock use and runs too hot for extended use. With the circle track coil I never had an issue with the coil overheating. Now I did have to replace the distributor caps often, but I think that is just the result of running a very hot spark through a cap and rotor that were not designed for so much current at that voltage.

This is not a cheap solution. Maybe if you look hard you can find something used or on sale and save some money. I got a fairly good deal, and an outstanding deal compared to the current prices. If I had to do it over again and buy everything brand new out of the Summit catalog I am not sure I would, but I also had something that got the job done in the mean time.