Ive been playing with the distributor in my 440 for the last two days. I did get the car to pick up alot below 3500 rpm but heres my problem. The distributor is a stock 1966 440 single point unit.

The advance plate is stamped 8, so it has 16 degrees of total mechanical advance. First off this seems extremely low for a stock dizzy. I know alot of people would like this instead of having to weld up their slots, but I would have to run 22 degrees of initial to get to 38, I think the starter would kick back against that.

It doesnt matter anyway because anything more than 13 degrees of initial pings. Thats only 29 total. It is a stock 68 440 with headers and 2.94 gears and it is the 350 horse engine. Is it possible that cylinder compression could be that high with this cam that I can only run 29 degrees of total timing? This is with Sunoco 93 octane.

Also, I occasionally get a weird sound that sounds like the sound of a hot exhaust pinging after you shut the car off. Its not the marble/rattle sound of detonation, but it is a weird sound and seems to happen more on hills, but the amount of gas you gives it doesnt effect it and its not consistent, it will do it once, then maybe ten seconds later, then stop. Is this anything to worry about?