Inliners International Forums General Discussion Engines What's your timing??

Set up your HEI to match the OEM.

The HEI needs a Full 12 volts to work right You can not use the stock Point wire it is a Resistor wire. It only has 12 volts when cranking once it starts the volts drop.

Thanks, I run 12V straight to the distributor for the HEI. I kept the resistor wire in place for the points. Thinking about this, I think I might have a mistake in the writing, I have the 12V run along side the resistor wire, but it works. For now, seems I might have some back bleeding during start, will check.

Mark

I meant setup the HEI timing curve to match the OEM timing curve since it seems to run better with the OEM installed. On my HEI I ran a wire from a keyed source on the fuse block. I plan to wire in a relay so it gets full power, but that is a project for when I take out the dash for other fixes.

Where did you take the 12 volts from?

Almost sounds like he tapped in to the main source on the starter, or somewhere down low to run it next to the resistor wire.

Classic Doh! stupid mistake.

In the fuse box, there was an unused stud where I used for the HEI and the electric choke wires. Now this is a switched box, power goes away when you hit "start" on the key. Genius that I am, I ran the wire in parallel to the resistor wire to the coil. Works fine. For some reason, though, i had to put in a bigger than expected fuse. But hey, it's the HEI and choke. Bonus was that when i put points and condenser back in, a temporary try worked by pulling out the fuse. Easy peasy.

Genius that I'm not, I didn't realize that when I hit start, the 13.6v power back-feeds the circuits in the fuse box. That's why the fuse is bigger than I expected. I've tracked down this "bleed-back" bug at work several times and even in our house when i discovered an intermittent short buggering up things at the breaker box. I cannot believe that I did this.

Now, how do i wire this properly? Relay powered from the resistor wire like listed below? Other ways?
https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/c/nos...relay&pos=0

Do you know if Camaro's have a standard ballast resistor like this? If so, I could simply short it out.
https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/c/sta...+wire&pos=0

Thanks,
Mark

I would use the resistor wire to trigger the relay.

Find a good hot 12 volt in the fuse box some have just a spade you can run from and only hot when the key is in the run. not a auxilliary hot.

Hmm, it turns out I had it correct after all. It's just that when I put the bolt meter on it, I didn't crank it enough to see that the voltage didn't drop too zero. I put my homemade trouble light on it. The light just dimmed as kit cranked.

Can't wait for Saturday!

The car runs better than it ever has! It still guzzles gas. I haven't checked the plugs, but they looked better than ever after last week's run with the distributor. Expect it to be similar.

This is Pertronix with the copper springs.

The distributor seemed a little "sticky" when varying the RPMs just a little bit. It would hold same timing for a few hundred RPMs on occasion and then move.

Here's the mechanical curves:
600 16.7
700 17.8
900 22.7
1000 23.0
1100 23.4
1200 25.1
1300 26.1
1400 26.4
1500 27.3
1600 28.0
1700 31.0
1800 35.1
1900 35.1
2000 35.1

Here's the Vacuum and timing with Vacuum attached
900 19.8 34.2
1000 20.0 34.9
1100 20.1 34.7
1200 20.5 34.7
1300 20.9 38.7
1400 21.0 41.2
1500 21.1 42.9