quote:Originally posted by mike the snake:
I DO have EFI, controlled by Haltech. Not sure if it controls timing as well though,
I think it only controls fuel.
It would be nice to just remove the springs and set the advance at full and let her rip.
II read that on cars with big cams it was common practice, and this car has a pretty big cam in it.
Not monstrous, but very big.
The point of the Haltech is to control EVERYTHING. You can even control the on/off points of the radiator fans.
If the ignition is not involved in the CPU then it is a waste of potential.
The reason that the engine is so docile at idle is likely attributable to the Haltech.
Your description of the engines characteristics are indications that Hal is right there controlling everything.
Considering everything you have gone through with this engine, if it were me, I would install a new distributor. Maybe send the existing one out to MSD to have them look at it and rebuild it but I don't see a lot of point to that?
If the new one fails at some point, which I hope it DOES NOT, you will have an ignition history pattern to follow and an extrapolation would tend to indicate to go in a different direction.
What is the compression ration of this engine? Do you know it?
I would try to download and save a copy of what is currently programmed into the CPU.
When you pull up all of the overlapping graphs it will explain to a large extent what is going on with the engine management.
You might want to ask Roger what he did with that? I doubt he was running on the "standard" program.
There had to have been a laptop computer involved in this. Those finalized tuning points for this engine were saved somewhere?