Inliners International Forums General Discussion Engines carb adjustments again

Okay, so my truck is running better but not great. To remind you, its a '58 chevy, rebuilt 235 ci, fenton headers, offy dual intake w/rochesters and a mallory dual point dist. It's been running rich but no real read on whether at idle of not, hasn't been driven much. After reading the tech tips I changed the jets to 51's and ran heat lines to the intake manifold with little differences. A local mechanic played with it and put 56's back in. I haven't done the other carb tips but plan on it. On removing the plugs and drilling the passage, do I need to replace the plugs? Any other advise? thanks.

Dear Mr. Floats;

What's the (total) dwell on your distributer??

Are you running a vacuum advance with it??

Are you able to adj the mixture screws like we discussed??

Haven't touched the distributor since I started playing with the truck again. (almost 2 years) I went through the steps you described but the mechanic has touched it since then. I thought he had the idle too high and the mixture too rich so I backed both down. Right now the idle is at 900-1000 rpm, which still seems high but it runs better than a lower setting. When I had the linkage off, to do carb adjustments, I also adjusted it's geometry to better clear the manifolds.

You might check the ignition again. I think you are right - the 900 rpm idle seems too high to me. If there is not much change after jets, heat to the intake etc, sounds like it could be the ignition. I agree with John - check dwell, timing the whole shot.

If I could just add something here. I'm no top notch mechanic but I have gone through the same battle. I too had a Mallory dual point, with twin Carters and Fentons on my 54 235. After frying two condensors and also fouling plugs with no major upgrade in performance from the stock ingnition, I went to an HEI from Tom Lagdons. Major improvement. Great burn on the plugs. A much hotter spark and my motor loves the electronic ignition upgrade. Maybe worth consideration? I wish I did the HEI first instead of spending for the Mallory.

Hi 52HardTop, I'm no "real" mechanic either. I have a similar set up to you - 235, dual Holleys and Fentons. I had problems with my dual point too. A guy in Minneapolis helped me and recurved it. Now the thing is PERFECT. If I get another inline, I am going to try an HEI too, just so I can see it myself. But, this is so good, in my opinion is is hard to beat. It did get discouraging until I figured it out, but mine was just like jfolts describes.

I have checked the timing and found some play in it. (the bead on the flywheel jumps arround a little while idling)

I looked at Langdon's HEI dist and it's cheaper than I expected and very tempting.

Back to one of my original questions:Do I need to replace the aluminum and lead plugs after "drilling out the restrictions" as described in the "multiple rochesters" tech section?

Thanks again for all the advice.