I recently had my 331 stoker partially disassembled to make some modifications (intake, pushrods, rockers, heads, and distributor removed).
When I reassembled the engine, it was hard starting, had a hell of a time idling, lacked any power, and the EGT gauge was going off scale. I rechecked everything, tested for vacuum leaks, checked initial timing (14 BTDC), checked fuel pressure, and could not find anything wrong. Though the timing was set correctly, it acted as if it was way wrong and I tried tuning the timing by ear. I continued advancing the timing until everything started working perfectly.
So cool right? No, not cool at all. When I checked, the timing is was set at
30 BTDC! Now this is impossible and I know it so I started looking for the source of the error. The damper timing scale is correct.. zero really is TDC. Plug wires are wired to the distributor in the correct order and plug 1 goes to the number 1 spot on the distributor cap.The engine is NOT detonating or pinging. It's running smooth as silk and not complaining one bit. Idle is good (for my cam) and power is prodigious. I'm driving it hard and all is well.. except I have no idea what my timing really is (it can't be 30 BTDC).
I have checked all this stuff several times and in a couple different ways and I can't find a way to account for the ~15 degrees of error. Any Ideas????
LJH
95GT