i apologize in advance for the lack of info that i have concerning my cam. i have played with my timing since i have had the car about 7 months. i have it at 12+ but it still feels abnormally sluggish out of the hole. the car came with a cam in it, my guess a E 303 or something simalar? i have heard 14 is max but is that on a stock cam? the rest of the engine is stock except it has a MAF headers and 2.5 exhaust with an H pipe and 40 series flows. a guy i work with has pretty potent 302 he said he runs 52+!!!! is that possible, the truck he has it in is fast and runs well. what do you guys think? thanks mike

 

A friend of mine had a chevy truck with a 400 and a 2 barrel (4 barrel with linkage unhooked) that he let his daughter learn how to drive at the track. They started out at 60 degrees total. It was running so fast that by the end of the night they had it on backed down to 10 initial. It still ran 7.80s at that. The thing about it is the distributor wasn't working right though. The truck never ran right the whole night and the distributor had to be replaced. Unless the motor is real low compression, 14 initial will be about as high as you would want to go being stock.

 

Your friend is talking about total timing while you are talking about initial timing. Although 52 degrees seems a bit high. I would expect a Mustang to only get to the mid 30's without serious pinging. You can bump your timing until you start hearing detonation/pinging. Most Mustangs go between 14-16 degrees initial. As for your car feeling sluggish. Are you running stock gears? How about an off road H-pipe? A reason why your car is so slow is possibly due to your combination. Think of it this way. The stock 5.0 cam was used to produce loads of low end torque. It somewhat helped to offset the high 2.73 or 3.08 rear gears. The Mustang exhaust has always been restrictive. However, the 4 cats, small tubing and crimped bends produced back-pressure which helped to leas to that torquey feel. However, once the Mustang got past 4500rpm, it quickly grew asthmatic. With that said, you completely moved your power band to the mid-rpm range with that cam. If you have stock gears, your car is straining just to get moving. By the time the car reaches it's new operating range, it runs into a brick wall(the stock heads and intake) and falls flat. And then you have your high-flow H-pipe which minimizes your low-end torque. I hope this gives you a better understanding of why your car is so sluggish.

 

u talking about base timing. are you setting it w/ the spout connector unplugged like you should? i run mine at 12* BTDC (base top dead center). the higher ur base timing the more octane you will need to run.

the guy you are talking to w/ the 52* or what ever is total timing and that is what is changed with a tune nothing you set with the dizzy.

 

1987notchback just so you don't get the wrong idea from my post above, the only reason the truck was running so much timing is because of a bad distributor. If it was working correctly, they would have blown the motor up. If the person you are referring to is running a non eec car, he may have had the same issue. Or such a low compression motor that it had to have a lot of timing to get it moving. Like say a car with dished pistons that is trying to run without the bottle.

 

i had 4.10's in it but i am curretly doing a 4 to 5 lug and new 3.73's i guess the main problem would be the stock intake and heads. the spout plug when i did the timming i read in the manual to unplug it i am not positive where or what it is? is it the wire that runs to the coil? thanks mike

 

it is on the same group of wires that plug into the distributor

 

so it runs from the distributer to the coil?

 

Here is a pic of it

http://www.allfordmustangs.com/forum...zzzzzzzzzz.jpg

 

thank you, now when i do change the timming i disconect it adjust the timming and then plug i back in?