On a Dodge van, you have to stick your head against the firewall and put your face on the battery to even see the 10 before and 10 after marks. Anything beyond that simply cannot be seen. It sucks, which is why I had always just timed it by ear and feel. I have no way to tell where 32-36 BTDC would even be.

My mech choke is pinned wide open so there is NO choke. In Phoenix it doesn`t get cold starts, it pops right off and just idles a little low for a bit, So.....

This is what I did this afternoon. I hooked up a vacuum guage to the carb and I timed it by ear to where I thought it felt the best and sounded good and the pedal responed crisply. Then just for shits and giggles I checked the timing with the light and the vac hose removed and it was set at 8 BTDC.

Then I adjusted the carb by the guage and got 17 to 18 vacuum depending on where I the idle was, which was between 1000 rpm`s half warmed up and 1100 once warmed up completely. So warmed up I`m pulling 18 in park and the tach is steady and there is no surging.

Then I dropped it into gear and the vacuum was 14 and slight surging of about 25 to 50 rpm`s on the tach as well as very slight surging on the vacuum.

I checked the vacuum advance with a brake bleeder tool with a guage on it and I pumped it up to see where the vac advance begins to move. It starts to advance at 12 or 13, possibly even 14, it`s hard to look at the mechanism and the guage at the same time.
When in drive if I give it some gas, the vac drops down to 10 and even as low as 5. Quicker throttle and it drops to zero momentarily.

My vac advance is adjustible (lucky me) but I`m not sure which direction I should turn it or how much a single turn or a half turn will do to the adjustment.

If my "in gear" (drive) vacuum is almost the same as where the vac advance begins to advance, then I guess this must be where my surge is comming from and it is "all in" way early which would make acceleration crappy at best ??

I have had a half dozen of these vans, most of them very fast for their weight. One that was a 1971 bone stock 360 2bbl ambulance with headers, one was a 1976 318 2bbl with just headers, one was a 1984 short box with a bored 360 and these parts with a 4 spd, one that was a 1972 with that same engine bored again and with more cam and headers. All of these ran great no matter what I put on them, and I have NEVER had this particular problem so it is all pretty foreign to me and relatively mind boggling.

"Oh, and I didn`t want to slap the stock points distributor into it becausde of the wiring hassle and also because it too has a vacuum advance and I would end up having the same problem, ... or most likely anyway". I also didn`t want to hook up the Mallory dual point with mechanical advance because of the hassle of dual points as well as the wiring to install it. It would be nice to have the mechanical advance at THIS point, but it would still be a total drag to deal with putting it in, dialing in the gaps etc etc. so I figured I`d work through what is on it now and attempt to cut the gremlins head off by tuning the diaphram to what my engine is doing so I can hopefully get it to act "Normal?"

Anyone have any idea`s based on the new info ?? I`d sure appreciate the input. I`d have already pulled out all my hair, ....but I`m already BALD !

Thanks, Guido