Im at 18 initial, 28 at 2500 and cant get to 38 till 3500 centrifugal. I just limited the V can to 10 max. Screwed that up too. Before it was Vacumm giving 25 degrees hooked to manifold, and base was set at 10. Idled at 35 degrees, but with vacumm hooked up it was showing 59 total at 3k. Ran great but scared of hurting it so I started "Tuning". I gotta undo what I did I guess. What has me stumped is during the first 30 minutes of running I had the base at 10 to start the engine for the first time. 5 minutes of run time at 2k and the headers were cherry red. I started turning the dist and found 40 degrees the pipes cooled down. Now Im twisted between lean or crazy timing. Tested with smoke machine for vacuum leaks. Bought a curv kit but havnt played there yet. I tried using a vacuum pump to check to see what actual timing is under load at 2200 to 2500 which pulls 12 inches under load of truck. Vacuum bleeds bad from my pump, so that didnt work. I cant figure why my combined changes so much when vacuum is applied. It adds up to more than my figures. Might try a timing tape instead of dial back light this weekend.
That's where you are hurting for power. You have the standard "timing is too slow and too much" stock distributor. That's why you were cooking your headers at a low initial. It's not lean, two strokes run hot when lean, turbos when lean, and in those cases it's under load, what you are seeing is standard late timing and your timing curve verifies it.
The reason vacuum changes it so much is because it's so slow of a curve, you need to go inside the distributor.
Take the vacuum out of your calculations for a while and only think centrifugal. If you get to 14 initial, (or even 16-18 if your truck likes it, but I think 14 is plenty) and then 36-38 total by 2800, that truck will be a totally different truck, especially part throttle. You can then add the vacuum advance on top of it, limited like you did, hooked to ported vacuum.
Even better, if you could park the truck or build a second distributor, Faron could likely whip something up quickly and you'd never look back.
I guarantee that your hot headers and low power is not from mixture.
