I took the distributor out today and took it apart. The mechanical advance is clean, free of debris and operating as normal. Cap is clean and no carbon tracks, rotor is good, plates, advance cam, weights, springs, everything looked good. Then I grabbed the reluctor/stator and it moved up,down and tilt. Seems my billet distributor has a mickey mouse bracket and a snap ring so thin the reluctor was moving up and over the snap ring. Hmm, I wonder where that was made. I don't know if that is what is causing the timing discrepancies or not but that has to go.

I took out the two GM HEIs I have and swapped a bunch of parts around to get one with the best internals out of the two. Played around for a while and got 10 at idle and 28 at 32000. I have an Accel adjustable vacuum can that is supposed to give 9 degrees of engine advance with just under 10 inches of vacuum at three turns. It gave me zero degrees at 12 inches and three turns, Hmm I wonder where that is made. I hope to get close to what I want with this distributor, I'm not looking forward to taking the thing out another 18 times to weld and file the stops to get the curve and advance I want.

All these adjustable advance cans just stop the movement at a specific setting, goes up so far then stops. Too bad someone didn't have one that actually changed the amount of movement by altering the pull of the diaphragm . One could have no movement until the vacuum signal was at the desired point.