black89gt

i finally found out today that my cousin( who owned the car before me) advanced the timing to like 13 or 14 degrees!! all this time ive been pumping regular gas when im suppose dto be pumping premium! got dman! but thing is i just pumped a whole tank yesterday so i have to wait for about a week or so htne pump some premium =)

92hatchLX

That still may not be then problem, i'm running exactly 14 degrees of timing and my car runs perfectly fine on 85 octane. Try and retard the timing a couple of degrees and go drive around and see if it gets any better. If that helps your car, than it is definante that you need to run premium fuel or retard your timing. Also, if you don't have timing gun you should get one.

Grey Fox

It shouldn't run badly...you might get some pinging under heavy load, but 13 degrees of timing is not that much.

Pure5.0

A car will always seem to run better with higher octane gas...as I have noticed...but as the others have said: That shouldn't be the problem.

If your car is pinging then yes the timing is too high and if it read 12-14 then your balancer may be off giving false reading. But you should be running fine with regular octane at 12 degrees timing in average weather (no 100 degree temps outside, or hot running engine)

I think you might want to check elsewhere too.

black89gt

it all started happening after i stopped pumping premium. after i went down to regular, the damn thing ran so bad, like it missed. so i think thats hte problem. at first, i thought it was the header leak, but i fixxed the leak and it still runs the same. so im thinking either i should retard the timing a degree or 2 or just try pumping premium again

92hatchLX

If it is the timing put it down somewhere between 10-12 degrees and that will take care of it, if it is a timing problem. Or go back to running premium gas. So ya, you are down the right track lol.

stanglx2002

all engines are different with there timing but if you dont want to run 93 then lower the timing

Tims 88GT

that is true, my 92gt i have set on 10 advanced, and my 88 i had on 7 advanced and my 88 pulls so much better than my 92

w8less

i would just start spending the extra dollar or two and fill that thing up with premium i put regular in my car one time and it ran like ****....but now my car is set at 15 and i run nothing but premium now and its runs like a dream

fastfox86

The ECU might just be used to premium if you reset it and still had a lower grade gas it might run just fine. I don't know if the EEC-IV's are that picky about fuel but my daily driver is an IS300 and if I go from premium to midgrade it knocks like mad unless I reset the ecu. Once I re-set it it's fine. You can just back your timing down until you use up that tank or back the timing down and keep running a lower grade. Or try re-setting the ecu and see if that helps.