I bought a spring advance kit and put the lightest spring on. With 14° initial timing I'm still getting only 24° total at 3000rpm, with vacuum advance plugged. With my original springs I was only getting about 28°.

 

Try using the factory weights and aftermarket springs.

 

That's not a bad idea. Good thing I saved them.

 

Make sure the cam plate on top of the dist shaft isn't installed upside-down.

 

Which kit do you have?

 

ditto, the weights should act against the rounded part of cam.

My Summit Racing HEI(believe its a re-badged ACCEL) came out of the box with the cam upside-down.

don't know if you have a GM hei or what, but if you have a summit or accel dist. 14* is about all those cam plates allow.

 

I installed the cam plate the way they had it in the diagram on the package. The kit came from Autozone's "performance" section (maybe that's the problem lol), not sure of the brand off hand, I'll check when I get home from work. What someone else told me is with the weak springs I'm already getting advance at idle and there isn't much room left above idle for the advance to increase.

 

The weights that come with the Mr. Gasket kit are worthless. I second the motion for stock weights and different springs.