Rebuilt my '70 318, bored .030 over and replaced the old distibutor and coil with a new electric distibutor. Set the timing at zero top dead center and it didn't like running that way. Advanced it to about 6 - 8 degrees and idles great, sounds great, starts great. But, when I give it a lot of gas it sputters and coughs sometimes. There is a raised section of the new Edlebrock intake manifold that the vacuum advance on the distributor hits when trying to turn it to advance it more. Is it common to have to advance it so much on an engine that should run with zero at top dead center? Any other ideas? Frustrated. Thanks.

Should be advanced to 10-12* at idle. I don't know of any old Mopar engine that was supposed to run at 0* timing. If the advance hits the intake then you need to move the wires one terminal over to give you room to move the distributer.

as mentioned you'll probably want 12* or so initial and maybe 36* total...

Thanks! I read somewhere that it was supposed to be set on zero top dead center, but obviously that was incorrect. I do appreciate the response. Thanks so much! Any other comments are also welcome. Chris.

The top dead center is just for installing the distributor at #1 spark plug wire for correct orientaion then you have to time it from there.

What Stump said bump the initial up. You mentioned the eddy intake/re the flat spot only the dist/coil was replaced not the carb