After two years I finally got my 383 fired up. The body is still off the frame but I wanted to get it going and check for leaks, etc. Anyway I have read alot about timing and such on the site. Im not sure if I did this right so I will explain what I did. I took the balancer to zero. I made sure I was on the compression stroke. Placed the distrubtor in towards the #1 plug. It seems to run ok but a little rough, this could be the carb and cold plugs. I have champion RC9YC should have went with RC12YC. When I put my timing light on at idle it reads around 19 on the balancer without the vacum advance hooked up. I have read alot about 10 degrees btdc. Should I have placed the balancer on 10 degress instead of zero? Could somone please explain base timing and how to set it. My pointing tab has no numbers on it. I have included a pic of the tab. Note this pic is not at tdc. Just a snap shot to show my balancer and pointing tab. Any and all help is appreciated. The motor is a 383 with pro one aluminum heads. 10.5 to 1 compression with a 230 lift cam.

http://home.earthlink.net/~preece/images/balancer2.jpg

Actually you did pretty good for firing up the engine. I usually want about 20 degrees of static/initial timing (without vacuum advance) to achieve a fast and easy start.

To time your engine, simply run the engine and with the vacuum advance plugged, idle below 1000 (so mechanical weights are not involved) turn the distributor clockwise for retarding the timing to about 12 degrees BTDC. Then if you add vacuum advance, you only need about 10 to 12 more degrees, reset idle (because the idle will increase with timing). About 20+ degrees at idle with vacuum advance is a good thing for "tip-in" throttle response and optimum cooling at idle and slow speeds.

Hope this is what you needed.

Agreed... to clarify, the vacuum line should be plugged so there are no vacuum leaks, and the vacuum advance on the dist should not be hooked to set you intitial timing.

You may need to do a few iterations of setting the carb idle mixture, setting the idle speed, and checking the timing.

If you intend to run manifold vacuum, plugging the vacuum advance in after initial is set will add 10 - 20 degrees of initial. This is fine, but you will need to check the total to make sure you are not getting too much (detonation). Good luck.

Agree as well, but once the car is totally together you may need to fiddle a bit again. Hot/warm engine starting can sometimes be a bear with initial timing set too advanced.

Also--it gets overlooked alot--make sure the balancer is zeroed, when the engine is at true TDC does the balancer line up with the 0 mark?

The balancer when at zero was TDC. I did check that. The one thing that I don't understand is when I start retarding the timing to say 12 degreess or so it don't want to idle or run right. Just seems real rough. Could this be the carb or plugs? Idle mixture? Also, I talked to my engine builder yesterday and he suggested taking a laser temp gun to the headers to and check the temp. He wants around 375 degrees coming out of the heads into the headers. I plan on doing this tonight? Thanks to all that have responded. Anyone else feel free to chime in. I can use the help.