[Cliff R]

Absolutely. I've made a nice living being the guy to step in and help out when things don't go as planned. Now that I'm mostly retired I still take in a few troubled set-ups for custom tuning. I'm limiting how many and how often so I can spend a LOT more time throwing sticks for my dogs and playing with the grand kids!........

[Shiny]

Originally Posted by ta man

Even with the most thought out and ideal combination the end user must know some basics to tune ..or have someone who knows how..quite often it is just a minor screw in or out of the idle mixture screws or up and down on the idle speed.

Maybe less often, but sometimes it's a rusty fuel sending unit contaminating an unproven Frankencarb and flooding it before the inexperienced owner could figure out why the carb used to idle but now won't...

And meanwhile, that same inexperienced owner put some weak springs in his distributor and saw the timing jump all over at idle..

Take a deep breath, Mike....

Thanks again to shaker455 for setting up the carb and protecting it from further blame.

Thanks again to Sun Tuned for supplying better springs.

Hopefully I am now able to follow Cliff's and others' guidance on timing.

Mike

[Mr Anonymous]

Been there. I did a very stout 455 olds street engine for a neighbor, and had it to where it idled good, was super crisp, great driving with 3.55s and a 150 shot for occasional use. Just a pure joy to drive, even with a fairly good sized UD solid cam.

It gets sold. I happen to get reconnected with the car about 4 owners later, they tell me how much of a POS that engine is. I showed them a video on my phone, and they couldn't believe it was the same car and same engine. Someone had changed the carb and the distributor, totally doing away with everything I had set up - every successive owner made it worse. For $x amount, I was willing to correct their problem. Instead, they sold me the engine for less than was in the heads alone, and went LS and poured a ton of money in it to get back where it was before. God must love idiots, he's made a lot of them recently.

[Cliff R]

I have at least 1000 similiar stories, here's a good one.

My brother owned a super nice 1978 Chevy 3/4 tone 4 x 4 with a 454, TH350, 4.10 gears. He bought it with the 454 in place but it had a poor fitting Edelbrock RPM intake on it and POS 600cfm (WAY too small) Edelbrock AFB clone carb sitting on it.

The distributor was a factory HEI with one of those POS advance kits in it, VA not hooked up.

It ran OK despite a minor vacuum leak at the intake, but not very impressive anyplace.

I built a custom 850cfm Q-jet for it, fixed the HEI' issues and removed the leaking intake and ground some material off the bottom so it would sit down and seal up.

The truck was an absolute ANIMAL. I still remember his son-in-law backing it out of the shop for the first test drive after the improvements. He gets down the main road, puts it in four wheel drive and ROASTS the tires nearly off the rims! I thought to myself at the time "what a hard-head" and total lack or respect for the nice gift he received from my brother. Anyhow, off it goes and the "hard head" son-in-law gets to enjoy (I call it run the dog piss out of) the turck until his daughter gets tired of his doesn't want to go to work ars and divorces him. The truck ends up getting sold.

Half a dozen years later she gets a new husband and miraculously he finds the truck and buys it back. It's not so nice a this point, runs like total dog chit, and the HEI now has another "kit" back in it and low and behold it's topped with another POS Edelbrock carb.....and of course I get asked to help it out once again......LOVELY!

So it ends up back here, I build another carb for it, put the distributor back in order and once again it's a BEAST! Makes one wonder how the same STOOPID tuning efforts keep getting applied and why someone would have touched it the second time around as there was no room for improving it anyplace with tuning and bolt ons..

Sadly however, this sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME in this hobby. It's got to run better with a shiny aftermarket carb on it right? Plus ALL the timing needs to be right off idle, EVERYTHING just works better that way, right? For sure we don't need no stinking Vacuum Advance, that MrGasket spring/weight kit fixed all that, right?

Bottom line here, IF folks quit believing all that propaganda all over the NET about how great these aftermarkt parts are and "custom tuning" methods were, I'd be out of a job by end of the week!.......

[Ram Air IV Jack]

Originally Posted by Cliff R

I have at least 1000 similiar stories, here's a good one.

My brother owned a super nice 1978 Chevy 3/4 tone 4 x 4 with a 454, TH350, 4.10 gears. He bought it with the 454 in place but it had a poor fitting Edelbrock RPM intake on it and POS 600cfm (WAY too small) Edelbrock AFB clone carb sitting on it.

The distributor was a factory HEI with one of those POS advance kits in it, VA not hooked up.

It ran OK despite a minor vacuum leak at the intake, but not very impressive anyplace.

I built a custom 850cfm Q-jet for it, fixed the HEI' issues and removed the leaking intake and ground some material off the bottom so it would sit down and seal up.

The truck was an absolute ANIMAL. I still remember his son-in-law backing it out of the shop for the first test drive after the improvements. He gets down the main road, puts it in four wheel drive and ROASTS the tires nearly off the rims! I thought to myself at the time "what a hard-head" and total lack or respect for the nice gift he received from my brother. Anyhow, off it goes and the "hard head" son-in-law gets to enjoy (I call it run the dog piss out of) the turck until his daughter gets tired of his doesn't want to go to work ars and divorces him. The truck ends up getting sold.

Half a dozen years later she gets a new husband and miraculously he finds the truck and buys it back. It's not so nice a this point, runs like total dog chit, and the HEI now has another "kit" back in it and low and behold it's topped with another POS Edelbrock carb.....and of course I get asked to help it out once again......LOVELY!

So it ends up back here, I build another carb for it, put the distributor back in order and once again it's a BEAST! Makes one wonder how the same STOOPID tuning efforts keep getting applied and why someone would have touched it the second time around as there was no room for improving it anyplace with tuning and bolt ons..

Sadly however, this sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME in this hobby. It's got to run better with a shiny aftermarket carb on it right? Plus ALL the timing needs to be right off idle, EVERYTHING just works better that way, right? For sure we don't need no stinking Vacuum Advance, that MrGasket spring/weight kit fixed all that, right?

Bottom line here, IF folks quit believing all that propaganda all over the NET about how great these aftermarkt parts are and "custom tuning" methods were, I'd be out of a job by end of the week!.......

Many hotrodders are not satisfied for long after someone else, repairs a screwup. Gotta be a better way to get more performance out of this engine so here goes. You see this theme all the time and that is why so many of these cars run poorly as reported here. The internet has opened up a surge of misinformation and bozos claiming to know how to make things better. PY is a good source because many people here know what they're talking about. However, if you get on Facebook in many of these groups, the level of intelligence drops dramatically. Furthermore, it seems many people want to be "told" how to do something rather than do their own research to overcome issues. When you consult with others you know and trust, that is the best way to repair issues. Do your own research!!