Timing is one of the things to check when trouble shooting cooling problems. Which way, advance or retard makes an engine run hotter? I'm not talking extremes, like 14* advance, or 6* retard, but something like the difference between 10* and 6* advance.

Thank you.

 

Timing set too far in either direction will make your engine run hotter

 

I was running 10 degrees on my last z28 and didnt really notice any change in temp.

 

On my engine anything past 2* retarted seems to make it overheat.

 

i've always heard too advanced will make you hotter and that's why you get preignition/knock

 

I'll stick with the facts and physics rather than repeating misinformed rumors...

Retarding it makes the engine run hot, because combustion doesn't get completed in time, as a result the heat produced by combustion doesn't all get turned into mechanical energy. After all, that's what the engine does, is to turn the heat stored in the fuel which is released by combustion into mechanical work, by allowing the hot gases produced by combustion to expand and cool. Timing retarded too far will also cause the exhaust system to run very hot, for the same reason: too much heat energy will still be in the exhaust gas.

It takes a really big change to make a noticeable difference. If a cooling system is incapable of dealing with that small of a timing difference, then it's not performing correctly in the frst place, and anohter 4 or 5 degrees of ambient temp would probably also overload it. As far as that goes, the only thing you should be looking for is extreme errors.

 

Well, everything else seems to be fine. It doesn't overheat persay, but certain runs hotter than I'd like it to.

I have a new aluminum radiator, stewart water pump, running water with two bottles of water wetter, and so on. Fan is fine, thermostat is fine.

Going down the freeway, no problems at all. When it gets warm is in traffic. It not uncommon to be running about 220*! Everything is in working order.

I'm running the timing at 10*. Should I perhaps turn it back to about 6* and see if it helps?

 

That worked!