Wolverine
Well-known member
I have owned a '76 L82 for the past 4 years, and just did my first complete tune-up. (I'm a novice with this stuff but have been muddling through a lot of repair projects.) It has always run really well and I did the tune-up more for the experience than anything else.
I changed the dist. cap, rotor, wires, plugs (correctly gapped), and coil (with an Accell HEI super coil). I went through all the vacuum hoses and replace a broken EGR thermal vacuum control switch. The last thing I did was set the timing back to factory specs (vacuum advance disconnected and plugged, idle to 1000 RPM's, timing to 12 degrees BTDC). I noted that before adjustment, the timing reading was off the scale (>14 degrees BTDC).
It started right up and ran really smooth -but- without much power. Clearly, the engine wants a lot more advance, and I am going to adjust the distributor back to where it was before. My question is - at factory specs is an L82 really that much of a dog? Or is there something wrong with the distributor? Is there something else I should be checking other than resetting the advance?
Thanks.
I changed the dist. cap, rotor, wires, plugs (correctly gapped), and coil (with an Accell HEI super coil). I went through all the vacuum hoses and replace a broken EGR thermal vacuum control switch. The last thing I did was set the timing back to factory specs (vacuum advance disconnected and plugged, idle to 1000 RPM's, timing to 12 degrees BTDC). I noted that before adjustment, the timing reading was off the scale (>14 degrees BTDC).
It started right up and ran really smooth -but- without much power. Clearly, the engine wants a lot more advance, and I am going to adjust the distributor back to where it was before. My question is - at factory specs is an L82 really that much of a dog? Or is there something wrong with the distributor? Is there something else I should be checking other than resetting the advance?
Thanks.