Quote:

It is possible "streetable" has different definition to me. A lot of people like a choppy idle on their street cars. I did explain to engine builder the use of the car, weight, rear gear, trans, tire size, etc. In their defense, it does have enough vacuum to run power brakes. The builder was Muscle Motors, who came very recommended on this forum when I was asking around. The dyno run sheet shows total timing of 36. I don't think it has initial timing. My mechanic did the install, and I have as much confidence in him and his abilities as any mechanic. Super good. That doesn't mean the timing or something else doesn't need to be tweaked to, or adding something like an X pipe as suggested. I hadn't thought of that. I want to have some info written down when I talked to him so I don't waste any of his time. I will see what he has to say. Today I checked the firing order just to be sure. there wasn't a loose wire or crossed wires (I doubted it but easy to check). I figured it runs too good to have that issue, but it idles like it might have. Thx.



What camshaft is in this thing?

What distributor?

There is a very good chance that 36 is fine for total, but if that distributor has 24+ of mechanical advance built in it, it's going to run like junk at idle and off idle. This is the "WORK" part of the program.

Unfortunately, sometimes parts get tossed at engines with no desire to get them sorted out properly. Dynos shops and most operators run for one thing in general, max HP/TQ. They don't usually worry about idle quality.

Put a timing light on it and see where you are.

A very easy test, find where it's set now. Warm it up, loosen the dist clamp and give a little twist CCW to the housing, did it pick up RPM? If so it wants the timing and the distributor mechanical advance will need adjusting. If you aren't going to fix it right then, reset it to where it was before the test and know that the initial timing setting is not correct for your engine.