What's the harm in retarding or advancing?

My 77 'vert was getting sluggish, so I adjusted valves, changed the oil &
tuned it up to factory specs, but still sluggish. VW and Bentley both say
the timing should be set at 5 degrees ATDC. I decided to experiment a bit,
and set it at about 2 1/2 ATDC. What a difference! Much peppier, and does 70
on the freeway now. Still starts right up on the first key turn.

This is an all stock engine with the stock dizzy.

My question is, by changing the timing, am I doing any harm to the engine? I
know it's not much of a change in timing, but what if I were to set it to
TDC or even 5 degrees BTDC? What range would be safe or harmful?
-Rich

Richard Golding wrote:

> My 77 'vert was getting sluggish, so I adjusted valves, changed the oil &
> tuned it up to factory specs, but still sluggish. VW and Bentley both say
> the timing should be set at 5 degrees ATDC. I decided to experiment a bit,
> and set it at about 2 1/2 ATDC. What a difference! Much peppier, and does 70
> on the freeway now. Still starts right up on the first key turn.
>
> This is an all stock engine with the stock dizzy.
>
> My question is, by changing the timing, am I doing any harm to the engine? I
> know it's not much of a change in timing, but what if I were to set it to
> TDC or even 5 degrees BTDC? What range would be safe or harmful?
> -Rich
>

You want to check the maximum advance it is getting at, say, 3000 RPM.

It's possible that the distrib is not working right.
Suck on each vac hose and see if the advance plate moves to the stop
and stays there. If not, there is a leak.

--

Speedy Jim
http://www.nls.net/mp/volks/

Richard Golding wrote:
>
> My 77 'vert was getting sluggish, so I adjusted valves, changed the oil &
> tuned it up to factory specs, but still sluggish. VW and Bentley both say
> the timing should be set at 5 degrees ATDC. I decided to experiment a bit,
> and set it at about 2 1/2 ATDC. What a difference! Much peppier, and does 70
> on the freeway now. Still starts right up on the first key turn.
>
> This is an all stock engine with the stock dizzy.
>
> My question is, by changing the timing, am I doing any harm to the engine? I
> know it's not much of a change in timing, but what if I were to set it to
> TDC or even 5 degrees BTDC? What range would be safe or harmful?
> -Rich



1. Do you have a DUAL vacuum distributor? Regardless of what engine is
in there, it's the distributor type that determines what timing to use.
Someone may have replaced the distributor with a wrong model at some
point, you can never know unless you owned the car from new.

2. did you adjust the timing precisely as instructed¨


Jan