I dropped the SA on idle and below across all load events to the bare minimum and i noticed a better idle and off idle behavior.

in the old days before computer mapping, when the distributer did all the advance duties.

how did the distributor adjust for load ,vacuum?

can an old school distributor be made to perform on par with a computer? or at least close?

I have been fooling with my SA at the lowere RPM's and found a huge amount of torque to my surprise it is a different car, now I can lug it down and take offs require less clutch finesse, as good as stock.

I have it where I think it just hauls *** from idle to redline.

why is it that the stock or near stock require so much advance so soon?

 

I don't know much, but it only seems logical that the low velocity must result in a very poor mix of fuel and air. It must just take forever to get burning. I've noticed the same thing with my engine.

 

I have always found my engines to like MORE spark advance at idle, off-idle, and even WOT at the lower RPMs than the factory calibrations. In fact, MOST of my tunes start from atleast 10* advance.

Old distributers compensated for load via vacuum advance.