Okay, so over the past two weeks I've removed everything electronic from my engine compartment, installed a points distributor, rebuilt the carb, removed the cat's, and adjusted my timing based on engine sound, and with a timing light.

When I set my timing (based on 14 btdc as the hood sticker suggests), it's sluggish and has slight hesitation, but if I retard it to around 20, it seems to run better. Could this be a sign of having my timing a tooth off at the cam, dwell and gap not set correctly, incorrect vacuum advancement, or a mixture of all three?

I had to remove the stock spark control module because it was failing, and changed my dual pickup coil dizzy over to a points system for simplicity. As far as I know it's completely stock other than that. Any ideas?

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| 1982 Dodge B-150 |
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| 1972 VW Campmobile |
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(1) Ditch the points ignition system and install an HEI ignition system as discussed in this thread

(2) You say you retarded the timing from 14 degrees to 20 degrees. I hope you mean advanced the timing because the only way the numbers go up if you retard the timing is if the motor is firing after TDC. The engine should be firing BEFORE TDC. Also, if the engine originally had a variation of the lean burn system, the under-hood sticker is now worthless with regards to the timing. You are going to be building th ignition system from scratch, so you need to do it right. Convert to HEI and then spend the time to learn how to recurve the timing advance build into the distributor.

I would also check for a ruptured vacuum advance can on the distributor and a slipped timing mark on the vibration dampener. Your timing chain could very likely be stretched, but I doubt it has jumped a tooth. Make sure the spark plug wires are in the correct firing order. Can you give us some idle and cruise vacuum readings?

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