I plugged in the timing light for the first time in a while after discovering my hold-down bolt was loose. Discovered the initial timing is 8 degrees ATDC. The norm is 8 degrees BTDC correct? My engine seems to like the retarded timing, just curious to see if this is outside the realm of normal. My compression is around 11:1. Any thoughts?

 

mine motor hates anything less than 10* intial advance

 

Do you have a stock dampener? If so the outside ring may be slipping.

 

yes 10' before top dead center is normal, in fact depending on your cam you could probably use even more timing being that you're running a 412ci motor and 11:1 compression. I would look into swapping out weights and springs in the distributor for less overall timing advance curve and running more initial. For instance on my last motor I ran 16' timing advance curve, so initial timing was 20' btdc and 36 total at 3500 rpm.

 

8 degrees ATDC is NOT NORMAL. Your balancer may have spun the outer ring and be giving you false #s. Most motors will not even idle with less than 0 deg. timing, especially performance motors. You shouldn't have less than 10 BTDC idling.

 

he said his hold down bolt was loose.....therefore the distributor would have spun around a bit, i do not think that the balancer has spun the outer ring, rather the distributor turned due to a loose hold down bolt.

 

There is no way my car will run with the timing at 8* ATDC.

 

I do have a balancer cover that has the timing marks displayed on the outside.