Very cool. What was your 60’ time? If your not making any more power above 4500, read a plug to check carb jetting. I ran into that problem with carb jets being off, car stopped accelerating at 1000’ foot mark. Some carb jetting and timing dropped a half second off ET. The track isn’t as easy as it seems when your trying sort out your old school car. Good luck, with your set up, you should get into 14s easily.
60’ is pretty consistent 2.2. There’s definately some tuning to do still. My hats off to anyone who tunes their own stuff. Most mechanics now are parts changers not skilled diagnostic technicians or tuners. It’s definately different than uploading a tune to your pcm. It’s something i’m working on getting better at.
Very true about parts changers. Invest in some sticky DOT drag tires, and once you know your timing and jetting are good, your 60’ times should drop and be into 14s easily
With most people, I think their interest is in other places. It just takes putting in the time, whether it’s making adjustments on the car or reading about theory and how to make the proper adjustments. Some are too lazy, some are too busy with other things in life. Or, it’s simply not their forte. You seem to be intrinsically motivated to better the performance of your car. Curiosity, desire and the willingness to outwork it will get you the performance gains. When you look back, there will be a lot more to be proud of than plugging in a tune.
Absolutely. I remember being on an even MORE limited budget than I am now and having to make what I had run better. It’s amazing, but you can pick up quite a bit if you’re willing to spend the time jetting, re-curving, etc. Besides that, the parts changers never seem to go any faster, they just keep throwing mismatched combos together and hoping for the best. I’ve also seen what havoc parts changers can do to a consumer’s wallet by not diagnosing a problem.
I have seen relatively mild sounding cars that were actually put together as a well though out, and tuned package, walk all over much hotter sounding rides.
I’m certainly not an expert but I feel like I could build a fairly well thought out combo. I just haven’t figured out how to do it to match a fairly well thought out budget haha. My wifes great about believing cars can be a familly affair, but she would still rather pay the mortgage than buy new heads.
Good thread, i’m enjoying the read. I know faster is supposed to be better but i’m a fan of consistency, thats why I like bracket racing. You can take mom’s mini van and beat all the new vette’s and caddy’s if your consistent. And I like seeing the classics on the starting line
The only downside to bracket racing is you can get outclassed very quickly by fast cars running very conservative brackets. I absolutely agree on the importance of consistency but I also like trying to push for new personal bests and you won’t win a bracket race that way
Also just checked my plugs and they’re actually looking pretty clean.
Where is your total mechanical timing? At what rpm does it top out? Where is you initial timing? If you drive this on the street I hope you are running a vacuum advance. One of the best tuning tools is a dial back style timing light. If you don’t have one, get one. You can probably find a good used one for 20 bucks. Another thing to find is the book Jacob’s Guide to Optomizing Your Ignition. About 20+ years ago, there was an ignition similar to MSD called Jacobs. It was supposed to be decent stuff. Dr. Jacob wrote a pretty good book about ignitions. If you can sort out all the advertising for his ignitions from the technical info there is a lot to learn.
With the mechanical, I usually like to get around 35 degrees mechanical all in by about 2500-3000.
Initial I like to have as much as the engine will start with after a 10 minute hot soak on a hot day. Usually about 14-16 degrees.
Back in the day when my 70 Cougar looked like it did in my avatar, it had a 351c with 2v heads, Blackjack headers, Edelbrock Performer Plus Cam which was 204/214 @ .050 with a 112 lobe separation. The intake was a Performer with a Holley 750 vac. It had a C-6 with a 2.75 gear. It went a 15.1. The best time I got with the car was a 14.84, but that may have been after I put in the 3.50 gear set. I don’t remember. After that, it had a 429 with aluminum CJ heads and though I never ran it at the track, I could hang with cars that were in the mid 11’s. That was with a 20 mph roll. The Cougar had no traction for 1st gear. 2nd gear I had to progressively apply throttle, otherwise it’d spin.
Anyway, if you don’t have it, get a dial back light and chart your current timing at 500 rpm intervals. Let us know the numbers.
I’m going by memory but I believe we went with 15* initial and 34* @2500. No vacuum advance. Car still started fine. We’ve never worked on fords so we kinda just went with what we had used on sbc’s and it seemed to work ok.
Wow Mark, my old “Cleveland Rocks” ('70 HT 4-speed) went 13.9@103 with a similar setup (and 3.23 gears). She only had a 650 mechanical secondary Holley.
Get that vacuum advance connected unless you like bad ring seal from fuel washed cylinders. It actually does serve a purpose on the street. A lot of Mopar guys make the same mistake, including me when I was younger. Unless it is a purpose built drag car, you are actually hurting yourself. 34-36 total is more chevy territory, and 32-34 is more small block Mopar territory. I’m running 36 total by 2800 with 12 degrees initial, but a lot of guys are running up to 38 with sbfs. A lot of people will disagree with this one, but 2,500 is a bit early for a street car in my experience. Hook that vacuum back up, take it for a ride and adjust it (the vacuum advance, not the initial) until you hear spark knock under mild acceleration in top gear (climbing a hill under light throttle is a good scenario), then dial it back in small increments until it’s gone. Most of my small block fords seemed to like 36-38 degrees total, but the curve depends on your gearing, compression, etc. There is no one size fits all. Gearing, compression (ratio), and the car’s weight all come in to play, so don’t be afraid to experiment with that curve, and by all means run vacuum advance. try full and ported to see what works best with your engine. I run ported on my 289, but a lot of guys go full vacuum with better results (again it’s the combo). My combo runs better on ported. Like I said, there’s always an anomaly, so don’t be afraid to experiment. My 400m in a heavy car with a mild cam(204,214 degrees, .484 .510 lift), Holley two barrel, and tall gears (2.75), with factory slugs actually ran best with 10 degrees initial, and 42 degrees total. When I built it the second time with a bigger cam (222 dgrees, .524 lift), 3.50 rear gear, milled heads and block decked, full port and polish, and 600 cfm dual feed Holley, that figure went to the same initial, but with 38 degrees total. Same car, same engine, different build, different gearing. At the time all I could get was a forged vesion of the factory slugs for this engine, otherwise the compression would have been higher.
That’s what works on my car. May not on yours so experiment, take notes on improvements, as well as the other way. I don’t have access to a chassis dyno, so I have to rely on seat of the pants, as well as plug color, etc. That being said, if you go from being lazy off the line, to needing traction aids, or chassis tuning because you have a more responsive, better tuned engine, then trust me, with traction, you’ll be faster. It does sound like you are upper rpm issues too, so I think you have a lot to gain in the tuning process which will take a little time. I would try tuning before tearing apart the top end for a cam change.
Get that car on a good stretch of rd., get in top gear and floor it (no passing gear where it doesn’t downshift, just make sure you have a long stretch with good sight, and is a good safe stretch of rd as your speeds will be pretty fast), hold it there long enough to climb in rpms past that early falling off stage, shut the engine down without taking your foot out of it, and when you get stopped pull a plug and check the color. Brownish/Tan is your goal. dark or black-too rich, white-too lean.
Way back in the day ('78), my '69 XR7 with a mild cam, Offy Dual Port intake, 600cfm Holley, cheap headers, FMX and a 3.00 open rear end would run 15.0 @ 95mph all day. When I sold it to my friend he put a 4.11 gear in it and it was a beast. 15.2 @87 seems a little off especially with a 3.90 gear.
I think some it is in the tune. My bud’s Fox body 'stang stock would run in the mid to low 14s stock as long as he had grip.
I think he’ll be in the 14s soon enough. Probably faster. I know he had a lean issue which I think he took care of. I’m sure mine isn’t as fast as I would like to think it is.