Im getting ready to do a poker run this saturday and my car is overheating cruising on the highway. I checked my timing and its at 34 initial and 46 total without vacuum advance. Im thinking about setting it to 34 total and hooking up the vaccum advance to see if it helps.
Details
BBC 407CI
Cast Iron Rec port heads
9.2:1 Comp ratio
Running 91
Professional Products Air Gap intake
Holley 750 DP
Stock HEI Unit
Exhaust is free 2" primarys and 3" all the way back

Im getting ready to do a poker run this saturday and my car is overheating cruising on the highway. I checked my timing and its at 34 initial and 46 total without vacuum advance. Im thinking about setting it to 34 total
34 initial ? maybe your balancer or timing mark is out ? should be around 10 to 16 maybe ? but yor total sounds o.k.
Timing too far retarded will cause overheating every time, check the initial again, somethings not right.

Make sure you disconnect the vacuum advance before you check the initial timing. My 454 is set at 14 initial, 36 total.

Im getting ready to do a poker run this saturday and my car is overheating cruising on the highway. I checked my timing and its at 34 initial and 46 total without vacuum advance. Im thinking about setting it to 34 total and hooking up the vaccum advance to see if it helps.
Details
BBC 407CI
Cast Iron Rec port heads
9.2:1 Comp ratio
Running 91
Professional Products Air Gap intake
Holley 750 DP
Stock HEI Unit
Exhaust is free 2" primarys and 3" all the way back

Isnt 46* total a little too much? Just asking. I thought the rule of thumb was 36-38* total.

Off topic: What casting rect ports are you running and how does the combo perform?

the heads are 1968, 8919840 that have been gasket matched and a very mild port clean up done to them. They run pretty good up high but I miss the torque from the oval ports. dynoed a 490hp at the crank with them, it was just under 400 with the virgin port oval 215s

Isnt 46* total a little too much?

Actually it's more than a little too much. I learned that years ago with my `67 396/350. More initial made it feel stronger so I kept adding more initial. I was running at the strip every week and couldn't wait to see how much quicker I'd run. Well, my next runs were almost 2 tenths slower! I'd made friends with some of the more experienced racers at the strip (Fremont in CA) and a couple of them helped me out. In a few minutes they's measured and marked my balancer at 36º and put a light on it. My total was about 44º. They set my timing just past the 36º mark (like 37 or 38) and my on my next run I got back the 2 tenths plus some. On their advice, I had my distributor recurved by a guy they recommended. End result was bottom end power like I'd felt with 44º total but without the top end power loss it'd caused. That was 30 years ago and since then I've been recurving my own distributors.

the heads are 1968, 8919840 that have been gasket matched and a very mild port clean up done to them. They run pretty good up high but I miss the torque from the oval ports. dynoed a 490hp at the crank with them, it was just under 400 with the virgin port oval 215s

Sounds good. I am always interested to hear about people's experience with RP's since I have a set of 990's laying around. Thanks for the reply.:)