I seem to remember someone saying they got a spring kit from the dealer for distributor re-curving. I went in to the local dealership today (sells both GM and Mopar!?) but the guy behind the counter had never heard of such a thing. All he could find in the catalog were the "super fast advance" electronic ignition conversion springs. Does anyone happen to have the part number, or know of another source for what I'm looking for?

The advance springs that Mopar Performance sells are very light, I feel too light unless you have a 2500+ rpm stall convertor.
I used the 2 lightest springs out of a Mr Gasket advance kit for a GM HEI dist which appear to be slightly heavier than the MP springs. There were more of these kits produced than there is demand for so they can be bought CHEAP. I had mine given to me.

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Slant Cecil

Yeah, I know I don't want anything labeled "super light." Right now I've got a distributor out of a '78 volare supersix, and the primary spring is just a smidge light... I'm running 7 degrees of advance and still get a slight ping. The bottom end felt really good at 10 degrees, but it was pinging entirely too much for my comfort. Even know w/ the occaisonal light ping it makes me nervous. (New head and I /really/ don't wanna have to pull it off again.) I'll check out the Mr. Gasket kit next time I go in to the parts store. Another though: can I cut a coil or two off the springs and then re-bend the ends as needed?

I apologize for my ignorance... I've grown up in the fuel injection generation and would feel much more at home just tuning advance tables with a laptop. The megasquirt 'n spark setup is still a few years down the road though. Until then I've decided to do as much as possible with the distributor.

Yes.

I ended up making my own springs. I got some springs from mcmaster carr and could make them stiffer by getting rid of coils.......

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

Here's my long thread on what I went thru recurving my distributor


http://www.slantsix.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13264

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

Appreciate the link; I've looked through it before, but there's enough info there to merit several more read throughs. One question that I didnt' see answered though; how did you develop your "ideal" curve? Just years of experience and a little intuition or... ?

Trial and error.........

I wired up a tach inside the car. Then mapped out the existing curve so I would know the advance at various rpms. (occasionally I locked out the distributor so there was no advance curve, and I knew the advance was whatever I timed it at) Then I did WOT runs and figured out where it pinged.

By shifting the advance around you can figure out how much advance will make the car ping at various rpms. From this you have a 'ideal' curve.

Then back off a 1-2 degrees and you have a curve to try to match with the distributor springs. With further testing you may find out that your 'ideal' isn't quite right as you might ping where you didn't expect, so you revise the curve a little....

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

crane used to sell an advance curve kit that included a bunch of different springs with a new advance canister and even an allen key. these parts from a smallblock chrysler are interchangeable with a slant six distributor.

-james

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I've had real good luck using two of the stock light distributor springs instead o using the super light ones meant for drag cars with real good gas. Those real light springs typically bring in all the advance by 1500-2000 rpm - a bit soon I feel for a street car. I just swap in two light factory ones, then set the total mechanical advance at 35 degrees at 3000 rpm, then total vacuum advance arouns 50-55 degrees.