MY son has a 68 W30. We rebuilt the engine years ago, but he has very few miles on it, probably less than 5K. He had it stored at his mother in-laws house. When to drive it, and said did not run good, so brought it home, and decided to do a tuneup. He put new cap, rotor, and wires, it has Protonic in it. He went to check the timing, and he said it was about 80 degrees, and not running real good. When he told me this, I said your light must be bad, it is my old one, at least 50 years old. I said I'll bring mine over, and recheck, mine is a set back type, I told him, it can't be that much, that the starter would not even turn it over, if that much. I said the chain must have jumped, or the balancer slipped. which seemed more likely, as the chain was replaced when rebuilt. Checked it with my light, and says 75 degrees. So we pull the cap, and moves back and forth OK, pulled number one plug, and brought it up to top dead center, and the rotor is in the right position, and balancer at zero. Didn't have a lot of time to keep checking, had to take his son to ball practice, so stopped for the day. Will look at again when we have more time. It is a auto tran, and has a lot of cam, and car has run good over the years, even when he took it to the track it ran low 14s which I thought was pretty good for that car. Any ideas? Can't believe car would turn over with that much timing. Idle did also pickup when vac hooked back up. Any ideas?

 

Firing order off, reading the ignition of a wire that is on #1 but shouldn't be??? Check the firing order first, i'm thinking but not sure if it would work, check the timing off of the opposing cylinder in this case #6.

Other ideas, the rotor is wrong or damaged or the distributor cap is not seated/clocked properly.

 

We checked the wire location, firing order correct, cap and rotor new and in place.

 

How does it run if you set the timing where it should be? You're checking timing with the vac advance disconnected?

 

Like I said, we ran out of time. Will try something like that when we recheck. I know we will have to really up the RPS, to decrease the timing, as if we do it at the speed it is now, it would die. Will let you know when we work on it next time, when trying to move distributor.

 

Protonic = pertronix ?

not a lot of love from former users here.

 

When I installed a FAST (Crane Cams bought them out) version of Pertronix I had to put like 25° initial just to start the car. Once I had it running the only way to tune it was the do the "advance till it pings and then back off a little" approach. I drove it for one year like that until the FAST unit died completely so I tossed it and went back to points.

 

Timing advance weights or vacuum advance stuck in the advanced position?

 

Can you quick swap back to points to eliminate the protonic as the culprit?