HEI update

[martybose]

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!