Moving on to the actual tune up, I noticed the coil ground terminal was missing, which causes the coil to burn up. Sure enough…
One new coil later!
Worked on installing the vacuum advance limiter, and playing with the distributor springs.
Pretty good tune up! It now idles at 800 RPM with 20” of vacuum.
Tune up complete!
I found these two missing parts at the junkyard when I went to measure an axle for another project!
Both installed!
So the final tune up specs ended up as following:
800 RPM
10* Initial timing
Vacuum advance limited to 10*
10* + 10* vacuum advance = 20* Idle
Stock weights + bar, MSD Medium and Medium spring (300’ elevation)
32* Total Timing, all in at 3000 RPM
I can safely say that this thing is now a 4 wheeled rocket! It’ll burn the tires from a roll! From the condition that I bought it in to now, I feel like I’ve gained 100HP! Which may actually be the case, with as poorly tuned as this engine was. No more lazy engine when on the throttle, it just flat out goes now! Very, very happy with the SBC 400’s performance now!