Just to give all of you a heads up out there !!!! Had my "69" in the garage yesterday and was wanting to find out what mechanical advance was and at what rpm it stopped advancing . Anyway I am by myself so the only way I can keep the r's up and run the timing light is to set up the idle rpm screw on the carb. My Chevelle has headers, don't know what brand, they came with the car when purchased three years. I wind it up to 2800 rpm ( I had installed a new set of weights and springs that were supposed to be fully advanced by 2800 rpm) looked at it with the light and turned the screw up to 3000 just to make sure it was all in. I had a dial-back light so I knew that I had 26 degrees of mechanical advance at 2800 rpms. As I backed the rpm on the idle screw back to idle I noticed a little column of smoke rising from the passenger side of engine. Thought this was an oil leak and didn't concern me much as I went to shut the car off. When I walked around to the front passenger side of the car after I had shut it off noticed that a flame was rising from number 6 plug boot. Flame was about the size of a Bic lighter on high and some bottled water put it out. I have read a lot of posts in here about guys looking to find total advance, mechincial advance, ect. This car has had this set of wires since I have owned it (3 years with no trouble). I think my cure is to put insulating boots over the spark plug boots to keep this from happening again. Only reason I can think of that it hasn't caught on fire before now is that when it is wound up to 3000 rpm it is going down the road and air is flowing though the engine compartment. Maybe just me , but kinda of jumpy when it come to fire under the hood. Have seen a couple of cars in my lifetime with engine fires that ended up being total losses. Just wanted to pass that little experience along to all the other shade tree mechanics like me. Anybody else have something like this happen or was this just a dumb oversight on my part.

Ted



:clonk:

Yup breaking my cam in, only no. 5.http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/grinser/grinning-smiley-018.gif

wow, well, I'm not sure about the air cooling the spark plug boot?? seems to me it just got too close to the headers. i run 2-1/8 inch primaries on a big block 502 with aluminum heads. I use insulating boots over the wire ends with no problem, but they can still not sit directly on the headers. Do you have a pic of your set up??

good luck

Sounds to me like you have an exhaust leak that's blowing on the plug boot. Kind of a blowtorch effect.

NO WAY should a plug boot catch fire because you're running the engine without the car moving down the road.