I finally got the mustang in good enough shape to take it on the 350 mile round trip to my buddys place to look at the motor. As usual he took a listen and said no problem I can fix that and pulled it into the shop. Problem is what I call a vibration at all speeds, seems worse at idle but that could just be because the frequency is low enough to feel it more. I tired everything I could think of an nothing helped. He thought it was a carb problem so tore into it and didnt find a problem except I had the float a bit low. He raised it to spec (also he thought the plugs looks a bit lean). No change there so he went after ignition. He found I had the base at about 18 and total at 48. It did not detonate at all with 87 octane gas. He checked TDC and it was correct so next we pulled the valve cover. His dial fixture thing would not fit the ford so we just started it and kinda eyeballed the lift with a calliper. With that crude test we could not find anything unusual. Intake and exhaust both have the same lift which is what the book says is stock. Compression was checked again 175,175,180,170,175,170. Looked down the spark holes and everything has a nice even layer of carbon. At this point our theory is that the cam is advanced one tooth. He says on a SBC that would give you about 12*. At idle you can feel all six. He says it could be that the exhaust valves are early so it kinda bleeds off the rest of the power stroke and thats the roughness I feel. He thinks thats also why I can run so much timing because the intake would be ahead to. From what you guys are saying I should be getting pinging around 35* and I was at 48 with out even a hint of it. I set it there based on max rpm and vac at idle and it didnt ping so I just left it there. It also looses all power at high rpms.
What do you guys think?
What do you guys think?
