What is meant by re-curving a distributor?

Thanks.

It means taking apart and changing the springs, vacuum pod, or mechanisms to alter the distributors timing characteristics from
original, or what they are set now, to what the end user desires
for the best performance of the engine.

To explain the term timing curve, using a machine, or a timing light and hand vacuum pump, you can make a chart plotting the timing advance the distributor is giving at specific rpm on the mechanism, and separately plot the advance given by the vacuum pod at various levels of vacuum, when charted out on a piece of graph paper it forms a "curve" showing the advance in timing (degrees) vs. rpm....

If you modified the the engine's performance a stock distributor is a good start, but is set to provide proper timing for a stock engine, now that the engine has been modified, it is no longer suitable to provide the optimum advance for the engine.


There are a fair amount of posts on how this is done that have been posted on the board a while back.