Tuning help

[rockdogz]

Ok, so after firing up the motor for the first time a couple weeks ago, I am still trying to get the timing right. Today I decided to try again and noticed a few things that don't seem right to me. First of all is the timing itself. Since I moved the battery to the trunk, I got the flaming river battery powered timing light so I wouldn't have to worry about power for the light and that seems to be a mistake. The light is not very bright and doesn't seem to flash at quite the right times - what I mean is that trying to read the timing seems very blurry from what I remember it being like (when I last did it several years ago!).

Anyway, the timing marks on the harmonic balancer only go up to 10 degrees ATC and up to 60 degrees BTC. This seems strange to me because I thought ATC meant advance, and that you would want like 20 degrees advance... I must be wrong about that though since there seems to be a lot more adjustability the other way.

The timing is about 10 degrees ATC, and when I try to retard (I think, moving the distributor counter-clockwise?) the timing then it starts to really rev high. To get a nice lope to it, I have to put it back to about 10 ATC, and then any further clockwise and it will about die. The more I hear the engine idle though, it sounds like something isn't quite right, and sometimes when I try to start it then it coughs and blows smoke out the air cleaner.

The other thing is that it runs hot. I know it's in a garage right now, but after just a few minutes of adjusting the timing - and before the radiator fans even kicked on - the headers were glowing red. Hmm, this doesn't seem normal to me... I saw a post a while back about glowing headers and the response was that the engine was running lean. This is EFI though, so ... ? I haven't hooked the engine scan tool yet, but can try that if there isn't something basic that I'm overlooking (likely!).

The engine doesn't seem to want to rev - when I give it gas, it hardly does anything and then finally will rev but not nearly proportionate to the amount of gas I'm giving it. The other strange thing is the tach (I mention it here because it may or may not be related). It isn't showing the correct RPM, even though it is set to 8 cylinders. I have it hooked to the output from the wiring harness that says tach. I started switching the settings on the back and thought it was working when I set it to 4 cylinders, but I still don't think it's working right since I blipped it pretty high and it didn't even get past 3 grand.

One thing that could be related is that I had to adjust the distributor about 90 degrees counter clockwise before first startup because the wires to the module were hitting the firewall. I adjusted it and then moved the wires on the cap to the correct cylinders.

To recap, the engine is a new 502 ram jet.

I appreciate you reading this far and with any thoughts you may have.


P.S.
Here's a recent pic after getting off the jackstands

Thanks,

[Blown353]

You have your timing the wrong way!

ATDC = after top dead center = retarded timing, excessively high exhaust gas temps (hence your glowing headers) and very poor throttle response. Right now you have your timing set 10 degrees ATDC, that's why the headers are glowing and throttle response is lazy. You need to put the timing the other way; BTDC (before top dead center) is advanced, which is where the car should be running-- that's why the balancer reads to 60 degrees BTDC but only 10 ATDC. I can't imagine a situation when you would want the timing after top dead center!

BTW, factory spec for the ZZ502/502 is 8 degrees at idle (800 rpm) and 36 degrees total @ 5000 rpm. I can't find the current specs for the 502 Ram Jet, but I would expect them to be about the same. Check the instructions for proper procedure of setting the timing, I don't know if the RamJet EFI has electronic timing control or not.

Setting the timing correctly will cure the poor throttle response and glowing headers.

Troy

[rockdogz]

Thanks, that seems to be it. I checked just now and the throttle wasn't returning to completely closed, so while I was probably heading in the right direction with the timing, the engine was revving up high because of the throttle being partially open at idle.