Randy,

Yes, both vacuum retard/advance and centrifugal advance/retard affect the phasing adjustment. That's why there is, what, about 30 degrees between the point where the rotor and cap pole first meet versus the point where the rotor and cap pole last meet. I think that this is enough to account for the variation of timing and, yes, ideally one would adjust the phasing on a distributor bench under "normal" advance conditions. But I don't have one of those.

I DO know it was off based on the strike pattern on the cap pole. I made an adjustment based on this and I'm confident it is closer to where it should be.

Of course, if phasing is way off, the gap between the cap pole and rotor will be so large that the arc will find some other more desireable path to ground. I don't think this was happening as I wasn't experiencing any miss. If the phasing is a little off, the larger gap under some advance conditions would cause a weaker spark leading to either poor idle or a weaker top end depending on where it was off.

But then again, it wasn't running poorly before and so the adjustment didn't really fix a problem other than the strike pattern.

Sholin

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What else, '73 MB 280 SEL (Lt Blue)
Daily driver: '84 190D 2.2 5 spd.