Stock with a Pertronix Ignitor and I think a Mr. Gasket spring kit to get all the advance in by 3,000 RPM.  

TKOPerformance wrote:

Stock with a Pertronix Ignitor and I think a Mr. Gasket spring kit to get all the advance in by 3,000 RPM.  

Does the spring kit actually work properly?  I put one in my distributor many years ago and it made way too much advance.

I'm running a cheap Chinese stock clone with good points and condenser that I sent to a distributor shop for recurve.
 

Stock Ford distributor with points and condenser. 

On my 1990 5.0 I have a chicom housing with Duraspark guts, and a Delphi HEI brain. Pros is you can find parts everywhere.

Dennis wrote:

TKOPerformance wrote:

Stock with a Pertronix Ignitor and I think a Mr. Gasket spring kit to get all the advance in by 3,000 RPM.  

Does the spring kit actually work properly?  I put one in my distributor many years ago and it made way too much advance.

I'm running a cheap Chinese stock clone with good points and condenser that I sent to a distributor shop for recurve.
 

It works if you use the right springs.  I think the kit came with 3 or 4 different springs, and I ended up with the lightest springs in the kit.  You also need either a balancer with marks on it up to 40-50 degrees BTDC, or a timing tape, and TDC on the balancer needs to actually be TDC #1 compression stroke.  

The spring kit doesn't actually add any advance.  It just changes the point at which all the mechanical advance is in.   Ford typically had a very lazy advance curve in them from the factory.  If you get all the advance in by 3,000 for a pedestrian engine (not a high performance street or race engine) its like adding 20 lbs/ft in the midrange.  Total advance may need to be like 42 degrees for an old school iron headed engine, because the design is just so inefficient.  Newer engines with better heads or aftermarket heads you probably wouldn't go much beyond 36 degrees total, and I've seen plenty or race engines that live in the 32-34 range.  
 

I ha e duraspark distributors that are recurved.   There is a guide online that shows the basics of how to.  I've put it on here before, and so has Mike.    I still have points distributor in the fe.  Butt! I did buy a duraspark vs from rock auto earlier this year.   However, it has an atrocious advance in it.  I've been contmplating trying to weld the mechanism, to create my own 15L.   

Now the tricky part.  I actually had a bit of trouble finding the Mr. Gasket spring kit 925d.  Nobody has it in stock anymore and I finally got one from oreilly, but only because I bought something else in tandem for them to ship it.  So I just got it last week. 

I've been deciding on what to do with making a harness.   Amazon has three of the plug ends, but if you notice, while the one that goes from the box to the distributor seems to be the same plug,  the catches are actually 90 degrees apart.   It can be modified to fit, like everything else, but I added up the cost and the plugs are about half the price of the painless harness as you can find that on Amazon for less than a hundred now.   

So I haven't decided yet on making another harness like I did for Gal A, or just going with convenience.   When I made the harness years ago, all those plug ends came from pick n pull.  Can't hardly find that stuff anymore!

rpm wrote:

Dennis wrote:

TKOPerformance wrote:

Stock with a Pertronix Ignitor and I think a Mr. Gasket spring kit to get all the advance in by 3,000 RPM.  

Does the spring kit actually work properly?  I put one in my distributor many years ago and it made way too much advance.

I'm running a cheap Chinese stock clone with good points and condenser that I sent to a distributor shop for recurve.
 

 
Springs do not affect the amount of advance, it controls when the advance happens. The travel slots in the arms on the shaft determine how much mechanical advance occurs. If you have a vacuum advance distributor, the vacuum advance with apply more advance on light throttle.

Y'all know that ANY spring kit will work !?!  The timing tape is specific to SBF...(we've been through the piston stop/TDC deal)
Nobody talks much about the NEED to limit the amount of total advance to no more than 45* degrees are so. The site I posted covers all that and how it can be done.
Re-curving the timing is still one of my best mods on an engine...SBF...Shivel-lay,,,MoPar...ANY !
6sally6
 

John Ha wrote:

I have Duraspark 2 (blue strain relief box).  I got my distributors from O'Reilly - they're remanufactured Ford units that Cardone sells (they have the Ford logo and part number in the casting).  I tried recurving them myself with the kits.  I had mixed results.  The spring kit worked well on the 351 but not so well on the 250.  On the 250 I fiddled with it for months - it was great in-town but fell on it's face around 75 mph.  So I sent that one out to the Mustang Barn (Dan - dan@mustangbarn.com) to be professionally recurved and it's really livened up the engine.  There's a fellow on fordsix.com that does them too (Bill of Ambler Race, user name wsa111)

I thought about changing the connectors between the Duraspark box and the distributor but decided to leave them alone.  My reasoning is that if the box fails, I won't have to change the connectors on the box to get the car running again.  This is probably not a big deal if you never drive the car more than a few miles from home, but if you drive it longer distances and may need to buy a part to fix it, it will be more convenient to have the OE connectors.

And a comment about the timing tape - it has to match your balancer diameter.  If it doesn't the markings won't be accurate.

You are correct !!     SBC won't work on SBF BBF  SBM etc.
Can you tell us what Mustang Barn changed that you didn't do !?
Different combination of springs? Stops?  Limits?  We'd be interested for future mods...
6sally6
 

On my 351W in the 68 I have an MSD billet distributor with vacuum advance, an MSD Blaster coil and an MSD 6A igniter box. I have never messed with it as far as changing springs, recurving, etc. My only issue has been having the magnetic pick up coil in the distributor fail once. Otherwise no problems. If I knew a lot about messing with the distributor to change the timing, springs or recurving it, maybe I could get more power out of it, but as is, I just drive it. 
On the 289 in the 65 I have a stock distributor, but with a Pertonix ignition system. As with the 68, I haven't tried to do any tweaking of the distributor. 

Last edited by Ron68 (Today 1:11 PM)