martybose

I actually wound up leaving the vaccuum advance alone but putting a tiewrap around the centrifugal advance weight to immobilize them. So I'm now running 5 degrees initial with no centrifugal advance and full vaccuum advance. Marty

I had the same issue, and did just what Greg suggested. I actually did it twice because I guessed wrong on how much initial advance I needed. I also had a problem with the junk clamp that Langdon included, so I wound up making my own out of some tubing with a setscrew that had the adjustment section from a stock distributor pinned to it. Much better! Marty

One clarification about the 1 wire GM's; When you first start your engine, the alternator doesn't charge until the first time you exceed the trigger RPM (about 2000 RPM in my case). Once it has triggered the first time it will charge at any RPM, idle included. Marty

I'd try 10 degrees; my motor has higher compression and didn't like that much. Once you get it running you can experiment with other settings. I found a nice long hill that is steep enough to need a fair amount of throttle, and I fiddled with the initial advance until I came up with a number that didn't ping on that hill. It turned out to be 5 degrees for my combo. Assuming you meant 0.060" (60 thousandths), that's what mine are set at right now. If I can find a later sparkplug meant for a larger gap, I'll probably go to 0.080". Marty

There are no such things as stupid questions; they're only stupid if you don't ask them. The cylinders are number 1 through 6 from the front to the back. Your head should have the firing order cast into it. Having the rotor pointing either way will work, as long as you put the spark plug leads into the cap with #1 where the rotor is pointed, then plug in the rest in the firing order. Marty

My 230 didn't run too well when I installed my HEI until I opened up the sparkplug gap a bunch, then it ran fine. I did have to go back to about 5 degrees initial before it settled down a bit. Marty

..... or get a flasher designed for use with LED's that doesn't use line resistance to set the flash rate. Marty

Maybe it's because the best British car is made by the Germans (Mini)! Marty

I worked at the IH plant in San Leandro, CA unitl it was closed; it's a shopping mall now! Marty

When I was just out of the Navy, my first job was working in an International Harvester plant making class 8 trucks. One of my first jobs was cleaning out the cab of a unit that had two problems. The first was that the engine ran away when they first fired it, and the emergency shutdown wasn't hooked up. That would have been bad enough, the the oil pressure gauge hose was disconnected under the dash! Boy, was that a mess! Marty

When I very cleverly put a screwdriver throught the cone of my original speaker, I just went down to Radio Shack and bought a speaker from them and wired it up to the original connector; worked just fine. Marty

They're probably mold numbers, since clearly they would have a lot of different molds for the same casting number. Marty

By the time I figured out that my Edmunds head should have been using 1/2" reach plugs, I had already damaged the threads in 2 cylinders by using 3/8" plugs. My mechanic is recommending 3/4" reach Timecerts, whcih he can install using small spacers, as he said that there are more sparkplug types available in that size. If I can find a 3/4" plug that comes with a .060" - .080" gap standard for my HEI ignition, I'm going for it! Marty

There's about a 50-50 chance that the bumper in question may be my old one, since I recently bought a pair of bumpers from him for my 47. He managed to send me the wrong rear bumper the first time, and never did manage to send me the bumper bolts that I had to purchase from him, and he didn't bother to cut off the washers they weld to the backside of the bumpers to hang them in the soup. Plus the packaging has to be seen to be believed; there must have been 4 rolls of tape holding the cardboard together. All in all, it took more time, and cost me more money is shipping costs than it was supposed to. That said, they sure look nice on my car, so check back with me in 3 or 4 years to see how they are holding up! Marty

$500 for an Edgy head? I thought they were more like $700-800. Marty

When I last reported on my Langdon HEI installation, I had mentioned that I found that the centrifugal advance had been jammed, and that I had fixed it. Since then my engine has been pinging on my favorite test hill, and the temperature started climbing on the freeway. Talked to my mechanic and gave him all of my numbers, and he stated that he felt I had too much advance under power. So today I pulled the distributor out to change the advance. I found that I could put a tiewrap around the weights to immobilize them, so I did that and reinstalled the distributor. Reset the initial setting to 5 degrees with no vacuum, then headed for my test hill. This time I went up the hill with no detonation at about 50 MPH in high gear, and the water temp only went up 5 degrees, and cooled off as soon as I got over the top. So I jumped on the freeway, and got the same 5 degrees warmer result, with no further temperature creeping. So I'm curious; does your HEI have a functioning centrifugal advance, or was mine supposed to have the centrigugal advance locked until I "fixed" it? For now I'm leaving it locked on my car. Marty PS I am still running the vacuum advance, as I believe it will improve my gas mileage to some extent!

I know; what I did just happened to suit me better! Marty PS Decided that I was being childish, so went back and completely deleted it. Interesting that there is no evidence of a deleted post, as all of the subsequent postings get renumbered.

I bow to the greater wisdom here; I just went back and deleted my reply to this bozo. Marty

Speedometer Electric in Hayward (510) 276-1522 They refurbed my speedo head, then used a gearbox and a stub cable to correct for my much smaller tire size. Marty

On my 47 it was welded in; it took quite a while to remove it without damaging the inner fenderwell. Maybe the different assembly plants did things differently? Marty

If I can find where I put all of my 6V bulbs when I cleaned up my garage, I'm sure that I have some. Marty

The issues of cleaner additives and higher octane are usually completely separate from each other. As an example, I believe that essentially the same additive package is used on all of the Chevron gasoline grades. They won't confirm this, of course, and my "evidence" is strictly anectdotal. Before it met its untimely demise, I put 168,000 miles on my 92 Civic commute car running Chevron 87 octane, and never once had to have any injector service, while friends of mine running other gasoline brands had to have their injectors cleaned every 50-60K miles. I also found it interesting that Chevron was the only major brand that didn't have to reformulate their domestic gasoline to meet the new Euro standards, which emphasized long term life of fuel system components. As far as octane goes, the conventional wisdom is you run the least octane that will run well without detonating. Very few of us are good enough to actually hear minor detonation. Our old cars are actually easier, since they are usually either okay or way off. it's much more difficult in a modern car, which often retards the ignition a few degrees if it detects an inaudible detonation. As for the extreme octanes, I've used them too. One of the race cars I work on usually runs 114-116 octane leaded racing gas, which is truly vile stuff. But it is using 20 pounds of boost to make 350 horsepower out of 90 cubic inches, and always runs with a cooler exhaust temp with the higher octane fuels. If your car runs fine on 87 octane, use it! YMMV, as always! Marty

Store it someplace out of sight, so that running across it will bring a smile to your face (I hope! ). Marty

The easiest way is just to jack up one wheel, then grab both sides of the tire and try to turn it. If the tierods are bad, you will feel and hear it! Marty

My mechanic said that my engine came out at about 9 to 1, and recommended that I run premium unleaded. While working through various carb and ignition issues, I definitely have detonated this thing more than a few times! Marty