Guys -

I may be the only one old enough to remember this.

In the glory days of hot rodding - like 1963-73 or so - you could not pick up a magazine that did not discuss "putting a curve" in a distributor. The state of the art was basically to have 8-10 degrees "static" advance and the then increase to 32-34 at 3000 rpm where the advance was "all in". On street cars there was a vacuum advance to give early advance under load.

These articles always included a picture of a distributor machine, operated by a guy in a white coat, which spun the distributor and measured the advance while various combination of diaphragms, weights and springs were tried until the desired "curve" was obtained. As I recall, this depended on the cam timing, weight/cubes ratio, trans type, and so on as well as what the car was going to be used for.

The retard aspect did not enter the picture until emissions became a concern.

So what you need to do is get rid of the retard function altogether, leaving the electronics convincingly hooked up. Send your distributor to someone like Randy Durrance (www.durranceeng.com) and tell him what you are after - tractability in traffic, mid-range pep, high-end power, etc - and let him give you a curve.

__________________
Chuck Taylor
Falls Church VA
'66 200, '66 230SL, '96 SL500. Sold: '81 380SL, '86 300E, '72 250C, '95 C220, 3 '84 280SL's '90 420SEL, '72 280SE, '73 280C, '78 280SE, '70 280SL, '77 450SL, '85 380SL, '87 560SL, '85 380SL, '72 350SL, '96 S500 Coupe