I had my laser shop cut and form this little instrument panel slash coin tray. Got it in and hooked up today. I can hardly wait to drive around this summer and see how hot the oil and trans really get. I bet it's crazy hot.
In tuning news, I got it back from Black Bear after the 3rd adjustment. To recap, it had only 22 deg advance at wot after the first initial tune, still only 22 degrees after first adjustment and still only 22 after the second adjustment. They said that's what it should be and any more was risking 'destruction'. I said nonsense, any chevy v8 and for that matter any wedge-head v8 engine wants 34-36 deg at wot. Low timing in a stock tune is to reduce NOx and protect the trannies in abused fleet vans, not to protect the engine from destruction. So I sent it up for a 4th time. I said I want the wot advance curve to be 20 deg at 2000, 30 deg at 3000, and a very conservative total of 32 by 3500 and up. And again I included this mechanical advance graph showing the curve of an out-of-the-box MSD distributor. So it comes back again and guy said they advanced the spark tables 'as I requested'. I don't really know what that means, but now it pings at part throttle (have not recorded a data log yet). I requested more timing only at wot. Is it not possible to add timing only at wot? It has to go up across the board? I don't believe it. The 0411 is supposed to be a very capable ecm. How can it be less tunable than the advance curve in a distributor?