VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND NEWER 1965-1970 Points conversion

I hope you Camaro folks can help me, no luck with my Firebird groups. First off, I'm not lost, I have a '37 Chevy and love it here. Until I can afford the Camaro of my dreams, I have to satisfy myself with my '69 Firebird, 350 2bbl with 2-speed auto (don't make fun of me, it's the only thing in my price range right now).

For years I thought that the electronic point conversion kits were gimmicks and simply ignored them. I saw on a TV show (it was not advertising any brand and had a real mechanic) that converting a mid-70's Chevy engine boosted its HP by a whopping 1/3. I decided to try it. The installation was indeed a snap and all went well. The last step, as you might imagine, was to time the engine, and here's the rub.

40 or so years ago, when I could not afford the luxury of a timing light, my brothers and I always timed our cars by sound and feel, everyone knows what I mean by that and I know some guys who still refuse to use a light. Anyway, I always start with timing by feel before I strap on the light and did so this time. Timing it by feel ended up being 25 degrees BTDC. Timing by light to specs was NOTICEABLY straining, and sure enough I am noticeably short on power, too. I moved it out a little, but could not bring myself to run it at the full 25 BTDC, but it didn't improve the power situation any. I have gone over the installation again, and no I didn't leave that little doohickey out.

So, any advice?

I have 2 Camaros that I still run points in & have never used any of the conversions. I always use the Echlin CS-89 points which shows up under Corvette listing. Never had any problems or ever thought about using a conversion kit. Good luck...Joe

Thanks for the input. I never had problems with the points, but I just had to pursue the prospect of increasing output by up to one-third with such a nominal investment of time and money.

Sorry but there is NO WAY it will increase your power by ANY percent. Spark is spark and it would take many mechanical changes to increase power 30%.
Set your timing where it runs the best (thats what I do) and live with it.
I believe the vacuum line to the advance must be discoected to set the timing on that engine.

The conversion to increase the power is a gimmick. I converted our 1970 Impala from points to solid state and it was a total disaster. Stay with the distributor points!

Getting the hotter spark of the electronic unit could improve performance a little, but not near as much as advertised. I'm wondering if you dropped the distributor in a tooth off to get the discrepancy with the timing light. If so, you just need to pull the distributor out and stick a long flat tip screwdriver in to turn the oil pump drive enough to line it up. If you are way advanced, I think you need to turn it just a smidge counter-clockwise, but it's been a long time since I've worked on one and could be wrong.

Yes, you could just twist it around for best performance, and it will run right, but that simple adjustment can make it correct as well as good.

Does the manufacter of your conversion kit offer technical support? If yes then they may have specific troubleshooting steps that will help identify the root cause of your problem.

Assuming you removed the dist to make the conversion then RichardJ may be correct about it being off a bit.

Do the timing marks on the balancer and the pointer align when #1 is at TDC?

Gene is correct about the vacuum advance can. It should be disconnected when doing your initial setup.

How much base timing is in it? 8*, 10*, 12* ??

How much mechanical advance is in the dist? At what RPM does it begin to come in? At what RPM is it all in?

Any issues with vacuum at idle?

Much to think about, eh?
:-)

Have you ever tried calling the cable company when their system is down? That's kind of what the tech support was.

There was no need to remove the distributor, it was a pretty easy job. I should certainly have known better, I think I'll just go back to the original, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Thanks everyone for the input.

That is a good rule to follow.....because if you do try to fix it when it ain't broke then it will be broke.