time of her life, for real
apparently raimi just has the time of her life at 6 degrees before top dead center (TDC). if you're unfamiliar with 'timing' it has to do with that split second it takes for a gas/air mixture to ignite. your camshaft governs how fast the pistons and valves and all that fun stuff go up and down, or at least something like that (still learning). what the camshaft ALSO does is turn the distributor so that your spark plugs fire sequentially in perfect sync with the up/down motions of the pistons. 0 degrees TDC is where the piston is at its lowest point. if you set your timing at 0, what happens is the piston comes down, the spark plug fires at that instant, and the piston is travelling back up already by the time the explosion reaches full combustion. you're wasting energy. when you set the timing before TDC (BTDC), what happens is the spark plug fires a certain amount of degrees (rotational degrees of the camshaft) before the piston hits bottom so that the explosion reaches full combustion when the piston is at the bottom of it's motion and the entire explosion is utilized in shooting the piston back up.
the previous owner put regular gasoline in her...which i may or may not have mentioned. because of this he retarded the timing two degrees and i think increased the idle speed because lower octane gas ignites a little slower. i started putting 92 octane gas in 'er 'cause she just performs better on it. BUT, the rain seems to have made her unhappy. even though the timing was off, she still ran better on higher octane gas before....but after the rain it threw it all outa' sync. don't know why. so i finally got into it, got a couple tools (borrowed a timing light, too) and set it back to the factory suggestion and BAM. she rocks now. before if you floored it off a stop sign, she'd just start surging (alternately accelerating and deccelerating) which i can't imagine is good for the engine. she'd do it all the way up to third gear.
now....off a stop sign...um....yeah. muahahhaaha.
*screeeeeeeeeeech*
the previous owner put regular gasoline in her...which i may or may not have mentioned. because of this he retarded the timing two degrees and i think increased the idle speed because lower octane gas ignites a little slower. i started putting 92 octane gas in 'er 'cause she just performs better on it. BUT, the rain seems to have made her unhappy. even though the timing was off, she still ran better on higher octane gas before....but after the rain it threw it all outa' sync. don't know why. so i finally got into it, got a couple tools (borrowed a timing light, too) and set it back to the factory suggestion and BAM. she rocks now. before if you floored it off a stop sign, she'd just start surging (alternately accelerating and deccelerating) which i can't imagine is good for the engine. she'd do it all the way up to third gear.
now....off a stop sign...um....yeah. muahahhaaha.
*screeeeeeeeeeech*
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