This is a question I've been wanting to ask, not because it's something I plan to do but just to satisfy my curiosity:

If one were to use premium gas and the coldest spark plugs, about how far could you advance the timing without detonation on a stock engine, and would there be any performance benefit to doing so?

 

No one's going to take a stab at this? Let me rephrase the question:

How much of a performance difference do timing advances make on stock engines? Is there really any gain to be made without building the engine with different cam(s) and so forth?

 

umm on a stock motor, i don't think timing will make a big difference, regardless of your fuel, because it's just that - fuel.

if you had full bolt-ons, you could mess around with the afr's and vtec crossover point and make a little more power, assuming you have vtec. and then you could adjust your timing after your afr's.

i think that should be correct. lol.

 

it depends on the engine and the car, I've found that about 16-18 is pretty good on most stock or lightly modified engines...b and d series...H series motors seem to not like the timing as much...doesn't seem to pick up much power, 5hp on most, some more, but the throttle response is better...the motor feels "crisper"

this is from dyno experience btw,

now for the extreme side of it, we sell snow's performance water/meth kits here at the shop, mostly for supercharged and turbocharged cars, but I had an extra kit kicking around and my buddies b16 hatch was on the dyno, so we installed the water/meth kit and decided we would see what kind of timing and power we could get out of the motor with the water/meth kit keeping egt's and detonation in check I was able to pick up about 40 whp and 15-20 wtq on a basically stock 00 SI b16

now it was probably 6-8 hours on the dyno and alot of fuc*ing with it to get those gains, and I have to back the timing out of it in 5th gear to keep it from melting itself to death, but the car rips and the throttle response is amazing

his setup was/is
93 hatch
00 b16a2 swap
Egay chipped p28 (who knows what the specs for the chip are)
ls header
exhaust/short ram intake
snow's performance stage 1 water/meth kit
vafc for tuning
stock heat range plugs

now base timing for this motor is around 12-14, with the water/meth kit I had base timing set at 26 and then advanced the intake cam gear another 2 degrees, it was quite a project to get that much base timing, and alot of tuning the air fuel ratio and water/meth to get the power, but for 299.99 for the water/meth kit, it seemed like a pretty good bang for the buck (he doesn't pay for dyno time, since he works here part time)

hope that answers your question

 

Thanks for the detailed post!

That definitely answered my question and more lol