What I heard from my customers is the feature they really like is being able to disable it when they walk away from their car. No way in h&ll to "hot wire" it.

A distributor that has 2 wires to make it run & you can’t hot wire it?

LOL, it's disabled/re-enable via your smartphone (Bluetooth), same way you tune it. Once you disable it, you need to log back in and re-enable it before it will ever fire.

Joe

Either way, it’s still much more difficult to set up a curve without being on the dyno. The programmable stuff is great. But you still need to know what key strokes to make.

I recently worked with Joe White at Joe's Distributor Restoration and was very happy with his service and pricing.

You can check out his work on Facebook; or call him at 330-843-0335.

He restores distributors primarily but, has a distributor machine and does custom curving.

I've personally experienced big gains more than once when messing with custom timing curves.

The first time, I picked up 1.5 tenths going from a distributor that I knew was not curved correctly, to one that FBO spec'd for me.

This last time, I switched from the FBO distributor to a NOS Mopar Performance Distributor from the 80's that Joe curved for me and picked up 3 tenths and 2.5 MPH. Disclaimer, I made other changes at the same time but, none I really felt on the butt dyno; I really feel that most came from the distributor. Did a bunch of street testing with all changes 1 by 1 and most were "meh, maybe that did something". Did testing with the distributor and was blown away with the difference I felt. So, did the distributor account for all the found time, MPH? Probably not but, I bet that it was most of it.

Went ahead & picked up a MSD 6AL Ultra Plus so I can just do the timing curve, have full control & adjustability of it. Going to lock out the Prestolite & see how this thing works out.

Yep, digital work around for analog problem!

All you need is a Progression Ignition distributor and a Carb Cheater with a couple smartphones to help tune your car.

Gus

No need for the carb cheater, I’ve had an O2 in the car for years, they work great for dialing in the carb.

Performance Trends engine program will calculate a timing curve for whatever fuel and engine combo you have. I have used it a bunch and it is always close.

If you have a timing light just get a buddy to help you, get a piece of paper have your buddy rev the engine at 250 rpm increments record the timing on the paper plot your advance curve. Distributor machine is faster but few of them are left around.

Have you had a chance to install the MSD and play with it yet? I am considering getting one and was wondering if you can update the timing curve on the fly while driving or dyno tuning without having to shut it down and restarting? I called and talked to a tech at Holley. It didn’t seem like they had a complete grasp on everything it did yet. I saw in the features that it said up to 35 degrees max retard and in the installation manual it said 30 degrees. They seemed to think you could get the 5 extra degrees only by doing the nitrous retard. I’m not sure which to believe.

I have not yet, I got a new, to me, winter 4x4 & I have been going thru doing maintenance to that before I get that MSD unit hooked up. Hopefully the week of Christmas I can get it in & see how it works. My understanding is the nitrous retard is not going to be adding to the 30 total because the point when you would hit the nitrous switch, you wouldn’t be near the max retard, you would be somewhere in the middle of the timing.

Is that a "race only" system? By that, I mean, it doesn't appear to have an engine load setting I.E. a vacuum advance. I never had one in my hands and there is no mention of any kind of light load (cursing) setting
.


Joe

It does have a vacuum/boost port to connect to for advancing/retarding timing, see below pic.

I don't know how I missed that. thanks, looks like a good system.