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TR6 TR6 dwell/points gap

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H

hultman

Freshman Member
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Sorry if this is a duplicate post. Something went haywire with my Internet connection on my first try.

Anyway, I'm having a problem getting my ignition set up properly on my '76 TR6. I was working on a vacuum leak, and had messed with the ignition in the process, but once I got the leak fixed, the car ran pretty good. So I decided to set the ignition back to factory to make it run better. Right! Set at 35 degree dwell, 4 degree ATDC with the retard disconnected, the car ran worse than it did with the intake leak!

So I set it back to 40 degrees dwell and advanced the timing a couple degrees and now it runs OK again. Not perfect, but OK.

Anyone have any experience with factory setting not working? Any ideas? I was thinking condensor, maybe taking longer dwell time to charge? I'd appeciate any thoughts on this.

Thanks!

Jim
 
If you have disconnected the vacumn retard (I am assuming you mean you blocked off the vacumn to the distributor), why not set your dwell back to 35 and set the timing at 8 degrees BTDC at idle, ie, just run centrifugal advance. This works for me. The vacumn advance is really only a pollution thing. Not sure what other reason to use it.

Bill
 
[ QUOTE ]
why not set your dwell back to 35 and set the timing at 8 degrees BTDC at idle, ie, just run centrifugal advance.
Bill

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I'm just running centrifugal advance, but 8 degrees BTDC? Wow. Isn't the factory timing spec 4 ATDC with the retard unit unplugged? Your engine doesn't ping with this setup?
 
Not sure where the 76 got it's vacumn to run vacumn advance, whether it was from the carbs or a deminished vacumn from the intake. Whatever. Make sure that the vacumns from the carbs are plugged, or otherwise used as mine is to suck a vacumn on the valve cover (3 carbs and through an oil separator). The only vacumn I am aware of from the intake is the powerful vacumn used to actuate your power brakes. The 76 was heavily "polluted down" and there may have been other vacumn lines in use. Now, if indeed you are running centrifugal advance, you will not have an active vacumn line to your distributor. Now, just rotate the distributor and using a timing light, set it to the 8 degrees BTDC. There is no ping. Try it, you'll like it.
My 73 has no pollution on it anymore. In Louisiana, you can get away with modifying a pre-81 engine. heck, in Louisiana, you can get away with a lot of things.



Bill
 
I'll give it a try.

The '76 has two vacuum lines other than the power brakes. One for the EGR valve on one for the vacuum retard on the distributor. I have plugged both of mine at the manifold. The distributor does have a mechanical/centrifugal advance, which works fine.

It will be interesting to see how this works! I live in Minnesota, where you generally can't get away with anything, but luckily we don't have emissions testing.

Thanks for the advice.

Jim
 
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