ok guys here it is.i have a 1982 z28 that has an old pre 1979 350 that was installed to replace the shot 305 it originally had,the car has worked great and has decent performance.but the distributor it has lacks a vaccum advance provision,so my question would be if i would get a performance increase if i were to install an old style distributor.the current distributor has an on cap coil and it seems to work well but im in doubt,i could not even install a set of light springs for thhe advance mechanism because its differnt than my other camaro's.any help is welcome,thanks in advance

1982 z28 4 speed bwt10

 

If you are using the distributor from the '82 engine, timing should be under control of the ECM. You probably won't see any benefit from changing to a mechanical one.

 

the car doesn't have the ecm anymore,i put it in the trash can 2 weeks ago thats why im not sure if the car is advancing it by itself or what?

 

It is "limping home". There is a small amount of advance built into the distributor ignition control module, but it's not enough for proper performance or economy.

IMHO, trashing the ECM is silly, but that's water under the bridge now (or whatever homily you want to apply here).

 

owned: you gotta learn somewhere, you don't have anything intelligent to say don't say anything at all.

Like said above, if you're running a computer controlled distirbutor on a non-computer controlled car you're getting little to no advance which is absolutely horrible. Are you also running your factory carb? If so thats double bad. The computer was there for a reason, to control and operate your engine.

 

i did not know that the dist.had a limp home mode but thats what i suspected.i actually did not render the ecm useless,it was disabled a long time ago by another owner,i just took it of the car. i am not running the original fuel induction equipment,i found out on the vin decoder that this car had the crossfire injection back when it was new,but that was trashed eons ago,im running a non cc q-jet,anyways thanks a lot for all the answers and i guess that i'll be puting in an old style distributor a soon as can get one THANK YOU GUYS!

 

so if i am reading this right a computer controlled distributor is what i would want for my drag car then i could set the timing and it would be locked out from any advance right

 

Ya know, I never thought of it using one that way... I'm sure theres a few very good reasons that you WOULDNT want to to do that though. Either modify a regular HEI or buy new one like an MSD Pro-Billet (it comes with parts that let you lock it out)