I forgot to mention that on the advice of Rick Ehrenberg from Mopar Action magazine, I am using vacuum advance. The vacuum can is cranked back to the point where it gets 16-18 vacuum for a total of around 49-50 degrees. It jumps a bit so it is hard to be specific. Rick states that even high performance engines can benefit from the vacuum advance because it promotes complete combustion.
I will admit that this car isn't a daily commuter, but I do like to take it on trips. Last weekend I drove 995 miles to Los Angeles and back. It is unlikely that I'd drag race it much, maybe once or twice a year. The vacuum advance made a 1.5 mpg increase the last time I did a tankful to tankful comparison. YES, I know that it sounds silly to expect reasonable fuel economy from a car like this, I was just trying to improve the efficiency. I didn't expect the economy increase to come at the expense of detonation. I'll plug the vacuum advance and run it on 91 octane to see what happens.
IQ52:
I meant no disrespect to you. My reference to other peoples "LUCK" was more about my run of tough "luck". You ask questions and take advice and some of it works. Some doesn't.
To all others:
I appreciate the suggestions about losing quench. I have heard the same point made by other smart people. In truth, I don't feel confident that anything is 100% right to lower compression except to run " D " shaped dished pistons that retain a flat top on the quench side. I am going to keep at it though. I'm not too keen on pulling the motor out or removing the heads just yet.
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Last year I ran an ignition box that some here may have read about: The REV-N-NATOR. It was tested in Mopar Muscle last summer. The testing was performed by Dunnuck Racing. Kevin tested it against 3 other Mopar ECUs. The baseline was a replacement unit from Wells, then they used an orange box and a chrome unit. The Wells had a tendency to retard timing in the midrange, costing power. The Orange unit also had a pull back of timing, though less so. The Chrome box was the best of the first three. The Rev-n-nator unit has improved circuitry and has no hiccups in the curve. It made the most peak power and the most average power of all they tested.
I ran one of these Rev-n-nator units and was impressed with the gains, but as they stated, my timing had to be retarded even more to avoid detonation. I don't care what the timing numbers are if the engine runs right, but retarding the timing meant that my initial timing came down as well. The 17 degrees of initial helps the idle quality. dropping it to 12 to 13 degrees made it feel lazy from a stop. To take advantage of this unit, I'd need to dig into the distributor to limit the range of advance.
