Basically that's about it. Advance til it pings and back off. Then look
at the plugs a couple of times to look for evidence of detonation. Of
course I'm putting my engine back together right now because of a
detonation-caused seizure that I didn't hear. In my defense It was only
detonating in one cylinder, and it held together through three practices
and three races.
that sounds pretty low tech, but modern anti-knock sensors are acoustic.
And they retard the ignition until the knock stops.
Speaking of anti knock--the new 360 absolutely rocks. I dumped a few
gallons on lead-free race gas in last night because I thought I might have
got a tank of bad gas. Felt like I kicked in the afterburner. What a car.
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Taylor
To: fot@autox.team.net
Sent: 9/17/2003 2:56 PM
Subject: ignition timing
Fellow FOTers,
I'm so good with the foot in mouth disease that I might as well jump in
one
more time.
The way I set the ignition timing on my TR-4 is whilst driving to the
race and
cruising at say 4000 rpms, I press down on the accelerator and if the
engine
pings, I stop and retard the spark. If it doesn't ping I advance it
until it
does then back off again until it doesn't do it any more. After buying
race
gas at the track, I do it all over again during practice and then I go
on to
worry about something else because this seems to always work.
It also appears that the engine will run a little hotter if the spark is
retarded. This seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it?
So the question is, how do you real guys set your spark par excel lance?
And
how do you check it for each cylinder?
Richard Taylor
TR-4
Atlanta
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