Does the Mopar Performance book have Distributor info?

[Bigfoot]

A quick question. Does the Mopar Performance book have a section or graph or something that one can start with in adjusting your own distributor curves? I know I can send it to Don and he will do an excellent job but what I was wondering is where a person can get basic info on recurving the distributor for a certain engine/application or make of car. I know about the total timing and the phasing etc. but where do you start, there has to be a chart or something to refrence or is it all trial and error. You build one till it works flawlessly and keep notes and then another etc. until you have your own data base, this works great for a shop but for the home tinkerer it would take for ever. The more I learn about Dodges the better I am. As an recovering Chevyahollic it is all new to me and I love it. Any thoughts?

[rumblefish360]

Why yes they do in the engines book. But the info is thin if you dont understand where your at to begin with. It does have a graph of how the stock unit advances and how your race unit should advance. But stock units vary from ride to ride.
Same goes with the advance for your car. It'll be different than the next.
\I allways fully support and give the thumbs up for anyone trying to things by themselfs instead of just doing the simple thing and giving the work to someone else.
If it's over your head or time is a problem, then I could not say a thing. Except, your doing the right thing.
Best way to see if your doing it right is at the track and how you feel it rides when you drive.

I also allways suggest the engines book along with the chassis book. It's all MoPar by MoPar for your MoPar.

[Bigfoot]

rumblefish360: Which exact manual are you talking about when you said "The engines book". I have a couple of off shoot "How to rebuild Dodge Engines" books but everyone of them is extremely lacking in Distibutor info. They all basically say "take it to a shop with a Sun Distributor machine and let them do it" which is of course useless to me. I understand the concept of removing timing from the distributor by welding up the advance weight slots, and the rate of advance by changing different springs. My 318 seems to like 13-15 deg btdc and the max is supposed to be 34 deg btdc for a small block. Looking at my stock distributor with a 11 deg slot, I would need to weld up an amount to only get (34-15=19) deg mechanical. The slot will give me 11x2=22 deg so I would need to take out at least 22-19=3 deg or 1.5 deg worth of slot lenght as a minimum. So realistically I would take out probably 6 deg or 3 deg worth of slot lenght and start there. Make some runs and see if I have detonation and the play with differnet springs for the advance rate. If everything is fine then remove a little bit more from the slots and start over. So you can see that if you have say 4 different spring combo's and remove 1 deg worth of advance from your welder up slot, you could have 4x6 different combo's to try. This is why people just send it in to Don to work on. That is a lot of labor and gas burning to get it to where you want it. Hence the book to try and at least point you down the correct path to only say 4 combo's to try which is a nice saturday morning.

[rumblefish360]

Well, it sounds like you have a good drip on what your doing.
The offering is by Mom MoPar herself is what I'm talking about.
The "Engines manual" is now divided up for engine family.
(LA, B & RB, Magnum, etc...)
The amount of trys you have maybe a plenty, so I would suggest a logical aproach to it. Go halfway in the avial. combos and write down the results. The go a step or 2 farther. Record results. Better? Worse? Now you have narrowed it down to just about 4 more combos.
This maybe the only way to try it since the only computer avialable to you at the track is the almighty brain.
Don could give you a better starting point to try the testing out with.

[creative1]

lets see... welding up the slots would reduce the amount of advance so if your initial timing doesnt change, then if you dont have spark knock (ping, detonation) now, you sure arent going to get it by reducing the amount of advance. spark knock is caused by timing that is too advanced. that would require lengthening the slots in the distributor centrifugal advance unit, or at least installing weaker springs so it gets the advance quicker.

[cuda66273]

Quote
"You build one till it works flawlessly and keep notes and then another etc. until you have your own data base, this works great for a shop but for the home tinkerer it would take for ever"

That's exactly how we started on these things over 8 years ago...and we've kept all the data religously...we're very protective of this information...it's a well guarded family secret...only Duke the Big Red Dog and I have the recipe and Dukes not talking.

I get all kinds of emails requesting the settings and curves for different applications but we have thousands of hours in all our R&D and we're just not ready to throw that info out for free.

We have also cured the Chebby LT-1 problems and Vorteck 330 Crate Motors, along with International ignitions, AMC and we even did a Studebaker last week.

We get distributors for every brand you can think of including some industrial equipment, we did one last year for a 318 bolted to a chipper just sat there and screamed 10 hours a day at 3500 RPM at 230 degrees.

I've had Guy's get really P/O'ed at me because I won't tell them where to set the curve and how to do it, but that's how I make my mortgage payments and I feel that it's my work and I have a right to keep it a secret if I choose...so to those who have been sending the hate mail...

[creative1]

hey cuda... no hate mail from me... well... only a distributor you will maybe hate... lol... as soon as i can scrape together $100. ummm... do you charge extra for that plastic ring that holds the shaft in place? the one that always breaks when you drive the roll pin out? the one that when you go to the parts store to get a replacement they say "youre gonna have to buy a whole new distributor to get that"... lol

[zlfanatic]

Cuda,I don't blame you one bit for keeping your R&D secret,I work for a major aircraft corporation,we have auditors around all the time makeing sure we don't give out any classified information.

[Bigfoot]

Don: Absolutley keep it secret and don't let anybody know, this is what you do for a living and if you posted your results it will hit you on the bottom line one way or another. A kind member emailed me an article that appered in the Apr. 98 Mopar Muscle and it basically said what I reiterated above about welding and milling the slots but was vague on the springs to use other than saying try it at stock and increase the advance rate till you get the best performance. In my quest I now have the slots correct for 15 initial and 34 total, it is just a matter of playing the spring game to where it needs to be. Once that is done than I will tackle the phasing concept and see how productive it is. Like I said Don, it would be easier and less headaches to send you the distributor but I am a purest and inquisative by nature and I want to truely say "I did everything myself". Unless of course I am at my wits end and then you will be getting a distributor and I will keep it secret.