Gang,
After a fairly long break from car projects, I installed a progression ignition HEI yesterday afternoon on my ‘66 455-equipped Starfire.

It’s an HEI distributor that does away with traditional vacuum cans & mechanical weights and springs in favor of Bluetooth (and essentially infinitely adjustable) timing control. Pricey at $500, but I’m willing to live with that so long as the the thing lasts a long time. Durability is very much an open question on day 2….

The problem it solves for me is part throttle ping and ever-harder-to-find vacuum advance cans. Our gas here in CA gets up to 91 octane, has alcohol in it, in varying amounts across the year, so gas quality is a moving target. I could go for avgas or race gas, but rarely do for my street driven big cars.

Installation took about an hour, of which 20 minutes or so was wrestling with a clamp on the vacuum line on the underside of the HEI. Honestly, this was a pretty quick, painless installation. The calling card of this distributor is you can adjust your timing from inside the car with your phone using Bluetooth. And save multiple timing tables. For street vs. racing, or low vs. high octane gas.

So now I’m on the hunt for optimal tuning tables. For those of you with more or less stock 455’s like me, what timing advance values do you recommend at idle, part throttle and WOT?

I’m starting with 16 degrees at 700 rpm idle, advancing to 22-24° at part throttle and all in at 3000 rpm at 32 degrees. I think I’m close, but have only this car to go by. Would any of you have different recommendations?

I have 2 big cars — ‘66 starfire and ‘66 98 convertible, but they’re street cars, not really hot rods, definitely not racers. Sure I like them powerful, but I’m hoping you might have some tips balancing power with economy as a secondary goal.

Opinions most welcome, I’m very much in learning mode on this one. But very, very to have solved the part throttle ping!

Cheers
Chris

 

So this distributor still receives a vacuum signal?
What is the vacuum source? Direct or ported? I recommend direct manifold vacuum source.

Not having ever set on of these up, maybe duplicate what a old school distributor would like?

Curb idle at 750 + 0 - 50 RPM.
Choke full open.
12-14° base
8-10° "vacuum"
Total 34,36, 38° at ~2800-3400rpm
Give it as much timing as it will tolerate with the available fuel, ambient conditions & driving habits.

Next is read the plugs and exhaust tips to see how rich or lean you are running. If too lean it wont tolerate as much timing.
Tune the carb and timing with a vacuum gauge. Adjust both to achieve the highest possible vacuum reading(obviously with engine running).

FYI adjustable position (don't use adj. rate) vacuum canisters are available to allow a 0-12° range of vacuum settings unlike the non adjustables, moot for you now.

 

I have the same distributor. I have had it for almost three years now. My curve is 16 at idle 28 rpm advance 10 vacuum advance. Vac advance works from 60 kpa to 20 kpa. I have made several timing maps. The problem I have is I believe my engine is a high compression 455. So i can only give it about 26 to 28 degrees at wot or it starts pinging. If yours is occurring at part throttle cruise the you need to play around with the vacuum based timing and at what pressures it operates in. After you drive it around awhile with the gauges function on you will get a sense of what kpa means in terms of inches of mercury. If you can give it 32 rpm based timing and it doesn't ping at wot you are golden.

 

 

Many thanks for forwarding your settings table. Comforting to hear I’m not too far off. Also encouraging to hear your PI HEI has endured 3 years of what-I’m-guessing is hobbyist/weekend use.

That’s more or less where I am, but with less of a speed-racing bend. Because, well, _racing_ a ‘66 Starfire? or a 98? They’re powerful enough, but hey, they’re big cars, meant for cruising.

Gotta say, though, it’s fun to have it pull hard with no pinging.

My cam (maybe RV, maybe mild) pulls 19-20” HG at idle and I think I’m running lower compression, so slightly more advanced timing may well be justified. On Day2 it’d be stupid to express a strong opinion. Looking forward to experimenting, but trying to be efficient.

Like your sig. the older I get, the more I realize I know very little.

My thanks again

Cheers
cf

 

They should spell "Aggressive" correctly.

The manuals I found on the Progression site don't describe the screen shot you showed above.
Why would you start your Vacuum Advance at 60KPa and have a Max Vacuum Advance at 20KPa?

Is that backwards?

 

Nope. I drive my car almost every day. Probably put 6 to 8k a year on the old girl.

 

 

Does your engine even get to 20Kpa?

 

If the units on the screen are "KPa Absolute" then the numbers make sense.

I am simply going by what the screen labels the units as: "KPa" it does not say "KPa Absolute".
Hopefully this is explained in the documentation.

 

Just a quick 2-weeks-in update:

New progression distributor working well. I’m enjoying experimenting with tuning tables. It’s too new to rate longevity, but early results are encouraging.

So far, I’ve eliminated the part-throttle knock/ping and am working on the tiniest little WOT knock/ping now. Will test a new tuning map tomorrow. Testing the new distributor on NorCal alcohol gas with 91 octane.

Car starts easily & idles smoothly, but the lack of mechanical doo-dads has changed the cold-start behavior: It doesn’t rev to 1000-1100 rpm on start up, since timing is set to ~9° under 300 rpm specifically for easy starting. If I have it right, the lack of high idle vacuum advance means cold starts are much lower “high” idle RPM.

On start up, it just fires up quietly and sits there idling cold at around 700-750 rpm. For a 455, it’s very quiet - almost tranquil. Quite different from the standard GM warm up cycle of 1000 rpm on high (cold) idle, the dropping back to 750 rpm once the choke opens up.

Anyway, so far so good. It’s young, but teething problems have been minimal. Still too new to tell, but mileage may be up a bit too.

I’m very curious how this new set up will endure over the long term.

Chris

 

I don't have one but am very interested- sounds good! Thanks for the thread/updates.

 

chris,

im thinking about going with this ignition system. Is it still performing well?

thanks

mike

 

I've had one for six months and really like it. One thing I really like is being able to have a ton of initial timing, yet set the cranking timing (500 RPM) at 10deg for easy hot starting. I used to have some minor part throttle pinging sometimes with my old HEI that I am not seeing with this. Quite happy with this.

 

Will this fit under a stock air cleaner? It appears from the pictures that it will but I couldn't find any dimensions

 

I've now installed 2 of them in Oldsmobiles with 455's. They're working very well and no hiccups so far. They start easily, though the cold start process is different - no real high idle. That may be my error though. As noted above it's great to have lots of initial timing and not have the cars ping mid- or heavy throttle on today's alcohol and lower octane gas.

They fit under the air cleaner just as an HEI would - same physical design as far I can observe. I can't say about factory since I'm using Edelbrock Performer intakes with dropped base air cleaners and slightly customized factory red air cleaner tops for 1966. For more info on those, see my posts about OAI for mid-60's big cars.

But overall? If I had a 3rd Olds, I'd get another. Having said that I'm keeping my regular HEI's under the house just in case.

Cheers
Chris

 

Wow! 🤯

https://progressionignition.com/prod...ei-distributor

I'm glad it's working well on your Olds. I might have to tell momma I want one for Father's Day.

 

Holy crap they have gone up in price. Too bad they don't have the small cap version available like other makes. It does make the Dual Sync that I need seem fair priced currently on sale.

 

They used to have the small cap, I have one. It was $529 in 2021. I wonder why they stopped making them?

Pat

 

They say the small cap will be back but no ETA from them.

 

This is the response I received earlier this year.

Message
Small cap Oldsmobile distributor available? If not when? Thanks

Not available until next year at the earliest. Thanks

--
Ted Regier
Progression Ignition, LLC
435 Air Park Rd STE B1
Edgewater, FL 32132
(714)332-9990

 

I've been playing more with mine, mostly on the low RPM end of things. I've been looking at the common acceleration profiles and added timing where I could and I'm quite pleased at how much more responsive the engine is now. When it pings, I can take timing away from that RPM/Vacuum area, without touching the rest of the map. Not a cheap distributor, but well worth the money.

 

I am thinking about getting this distributor for each 455 in my cars. I wonder if they are doing linear interpolation or splines fit between setpoints on the table...

 

Also, they are an hour north of me right off I-95 just off state road 442 (appropriate) so I asked if I could visit, pick up two distributors and get a tour. We'll see what they say.

 

I have no idea whether they’re doing linear interpolation or splines between the map points. I hadn’t really given much thought to the underlying math, I was just happy to be able to adjust timing at so many RPM points - more or less total freedom as opposed to endless iterative testing of springs, weights and vacuum cans.

I can say that they have more or less eliminated my part throttle and WOT pinging. The cars start easier, run better, may have gained in power, and don’t ping. Eventually I may play with different timing tables on different grades of gas, but not for a long time. I just run the highest octane I can get at a normal gas station and get back on the road.

Frankly I was happy enough to leave distributor weights, springs, and vacuum cans behind so as to not worry about the algorithms behind the timing map.

The only thing I can’t offer an opinion on is longevity. I’m still under a year on both, but I can say - so far, so good.

Chris

 

Thanks Chris, I am going to try them out. I am hoping they respond and allow me to show up at their door to pick them up and have a tour!

 

I do have another question about longevity. What happens when a user doesn't have access to the app anymore? Or worse, they don't support it anymore and you get a new handheld and can't get the app onto it? Or some crazy shiot like that down the road 10 years from now? Maybe just keep a coupla traditional HEI distributors on hand just in case? I wonder if there is a way to JTAG interface to it physically or something like that.

I should ask them all of this...

 

Given that I can download emulators for my favorite 1980s videogames, I suspect this won't be too much of a worry.

 

That's because someone went through the trouble to make emulators of beloved 80s video games. All bets are off on something as niche-y as this.

 

I’ve been around computers since punch card & teletype days in the early 70’s.

Great question on orphaned software. It happens. I hope it won’t happen with these units but that question is _way_ too early to answer. My related question is whether I can buy replacement internal boards in case the internal electric guts fail rarely. You never know, but I’d expect electrical/mechanical failure to precede software being orphaned. Still, these things do phone a server to store timing maps and if they go belly up and stop maintaining the server, I don’t know what’ll happen then.

I stashed my Taylor HEI’s with weights, vacuum can and springs units under my house. I’ll reinstall them if needed owing to unit failure or orphaned software.

But maybe by then we’ll have vegetable powered flux capacitors… Or maybe by then I can buy a battery with the same shape as an Olds 455 and run some electric motors.

Cheers
Chris