Thread: initil timing question

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hey can anyone here answer a dumb question i should know?? How do i lower my initial timing without effecting total timing?? my total is right where i want it to be @34 deg. i think you do it with springs and weights in distributor, am i right? i have msd streetfire/hei. i think it has regular weights in it but dont know for sure. any help would be appreciated.

I believe the springs are colored, i think gold silver and red

I guess it depends on the distributor. The MSD Pro Billet uses springs to control how fast the mechanical advance comes in. It uses a bushing to determine how much advance there will be. All I can find for the Streetfire HEI shows it's changed through the vacuum advance can.
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ceh383 is right. To reduce initial timing and maintain total advance you have to use a smaller diameter bushing. This allows more travel in the mechanical advance therefore you can use less initial. Sometimes you will have to lengthen the slot where the bushing is. This is best done on a distributor machine. You can do it by removing the dist. and reworking and reinstalling it but it is pretty tedious to do this.