well today i was looking under the hood of the car i just picked up and i noticed the distributor was advanced almost all the way it looked like.. so i loosened it up and rotated it back toward the radiator to the center where stock timing should be. now the car seems to act kinda funny. it back fires more like when i let off the gas and between shifts on occasions, and it idles a little higher than it did.. i'm not positive of the sound of detonation but it seems like what is happening is what should happen when you advance it, but yet i retarded the timing.. can someone shed a little light on this for me... oh and i noticed since retarding the timing the vtec got a lot more louder... i'm new to all this timing stuff.

 

You advanced it.

 

how did i advance it when i tilted the distributor toward the radiator tho.. i always thot angle it to the radiator will retard it.

 

Standing on the passenger side of the car looking at the distributor rotating the it clockwise is RETARDING the timing... vise versa, counter-clockwise is ADVANCING.... Most likely if you say you were rotating it toward the radiator I assume that you are talkin about the top of it, meaning that you were in fact retarding it... You may have put it back close to the center but that still doesn't mean you're at the STOCK 16 degrees BTDC... You need a timing gun to be sure... My guess is you still may be advanced a bit... I don't really know why your VTEC would be louder cuz there is NO reason for that... It's not like you are changing your cam timing... Oh well, hope this helps a lil... Peace

 

You will absolutely need a timing gun to find out where it actually is. When I put together my swap I just put the distributor in the middle like you and later i got a timing gun and checked, i was at around 22btdc. car ran fine probably cuz i had 91 gas, octane booster and i didn't rev past 3k. You may be retarding it way to much whitch will make the car run bad also.

 

stock timing is 16 degrees correct?

 

yeah it should be the book calls for something like 16 + or - 2 degrees.

 

when detonation occurs is the pining very noticable, something like screw driver or hammer tapping on matel? or is it some you really have to listen for.

 

Yea, that's exactly what it is... Sounds like a little ding (metal on metal contact)... It's very noticable even over the engines rev...