Jerry, I just installed new ignition wires this morning. I think I may be firing on all cylinders but its hard to tell. Sounds and feels like it. At idle I get these little fart sounds out of the tail pipe like something is a little off. Anyway I took her out and tryed to do Denny's trick of climbing a hill at 20MPH and then accelerating to gain speed. No such luck she still is lacking the power to climb. I got her on level ground and ran her a couple of miles. At one point when I was turning around to come back she back-fired through the carb one time in second gear going really slow. So I thought that it must be the timing. I had her advanced quite a bit, so I retarded her to 4 degrees. Tested her again and kept playing around with the distributor thinking I'll eventually find the sweet spot. It seemed to work the best at about 2 degrees advanced. Still the power is lacking. I'm thinking of removing the vacuum line to see if its gunked up. It's really got me scratching my head. I mean these are basic machines. It shouldn't be that difficult to figure out but I'm really stumped. Any further tests or suggests about where to go next? Was there ever a standard setting to retard the distributor a couple degrees as they came out of the factory? Just curious.
Oh, one other thing. This afternoon when I was out making distributor adjustments, when I would gun her I'd get a whole bunch of back-fire farts out of the exhaust no matter where I set the distibutor. What does that mean?
