[zmattrun]

well, sometimes its easy to think you know whats going on with your car and confidence and cockiness is fills the street with every turn of the crack

then days like today happen:
1972 240z
miss at idle and just plain poor performance

newish ignition components (only a few months old: cap, rotor, condenser, plugs and wires)
valve's where just adjusted, and carbs tuned
I even re-watched the z therapy video to see if I was missing anything

I check the gap on the points, it was alittle close so I put it to spec then all **** started to break lose, pinging everywhere, and now I'm playing the game of adjusting ignition timing to make the car not ping and still perform decently

any suggestions? anything that I've missed? sound like anything in particular?
btw, the miss that was there b4 still is there so I've fixed nothing and just built more problems into the car =(

thx in advance
matt

 

[jerja]

I would start by verifing the compression. Check the distributor shaft for excessive wobble.

 

[zmattrun]

excessive compared to what?

this is my problem with my wonderful car, I've never seen another one that anyone will let me dink around with, not like an old small block chevy where everyone on the block has two....

I know that the dist. rotor does move alittle, but I always thought that it was sintrifical(sp) advance that did that?
thanks
matt

 

[mizhele]

hello did you check if the points were fried ??? before i installed a pertronix ignitor in my 71 240z i had bad idle and poor performance most of the time the points were pitted , try a new set??? check your plugs ??? are they fouled .getting good spark?? pull each plug wire to see if it effects engine?? ( where rubber glove if you do this incase you have a bad wire it hurts) if your ignition system has a fault some where your going to hear a pinging...if your hearing tapping in the valve train than your valves should be checked again,,,how about the coil??? check the connections if they are backwords you loose alot of performance , i woild start simple like the plugs and work my way through the problem..you'll get it michele.p.s. if your points are bad id get a new ballast resister if you have the original. if its in poor shape you'll keep frieing up the points..

 

[johnh240]

If there are lots of miles on the old distributor you WILL get to the point that the point cam lobes are worn enough that you can't get the correct point gap AND dwell at the same time. I got to where I would just set it to dwell and ignore the gap. A Pertronix or ZX dizzy upgrade would do wonders. The Pertronix is simple and effective even with a worn dizzy shaft. Check the firing of each spark plug with a timing light (or an analyzer if you have access) for bad wire or plug. I have run into 2 or 3 bad spark plugs in the last couple of years, and they LOOKED fine. With stock engine and dizzy running regular gas, max timing w/o ping and decent performance maybe around 7d btdc (sea level) to maybe max of 10d btdc (high altitude). More than that and you will be running too much 'all in' total advance.