Have any of you had to have your timing lower than 10 degrees?

[Cyulost]

Right now my timing is at 10 degrees, fuel at 42 with vacuum off, and I still am getting detonation. It only occurs when the car is up to temperature, but the weird thing is it is doing it without being hard on it at all. Just accelerating quickly. At most I am seeing 2 pounds of boost when it is doing it. Any suggestions as to what to do?

Brandon

[5150 LX]

Here's a thought, do you still have the stock balancer? It could be possible that the outer ring has slipped a tad & you are not really at 10 degrees. Another scenario could be that your timing pointer could be off, once again not giving you an accurate timing reading.

You can check top dead center with a tool that threads into the spark plug hole for this purpose. The more accurate way is with another tool that sit's directly over the bore, however you have to have the head removed to use it.

Just some food for thought.

[TheHawk05]

5150 makes a good point. Don't trust the factory timing pointer as most tend to be off a degree or two. When my motor was done, the machine shop modified my pointer so it would point at "true" top dead centre when piston #1 was set there. My pointer was out 2 degrees. I have lots of friends with Stangs and one of the most popular mods of course is advancing the timing. Funny how some guys can run up to 15 degrees or a tad more while others can't run more than 12, yet all run good fuel . Why? Timing marks are off.

[Cyulost]

I never thought about that. Thats probably the problem. I'll just back the timing down untill it goes away.

Thanks
Brandon

[5150 LX]

Cyulost, just make a mental note of this and the next time you have the heads off rent the tool from autozone (or the like) and double check your TDC, the procedure is pretty simple and doesn't take much time.