Good post, Mitch-- but you can take this one step further for very short money.
DannyP posted:Mitch, first of all, great post. Stan says this all the time: 90% of "carb" problems are "spark" problems.
CB already has your laptop wish: the Black Box.
Or, you could do what I did, and cut out the distributor entirely.
Thanks for continuing to bang this drum for me, @DannyP, as I sometimes feel like I'm out here wearing animal furs and eating locusts, and sounding like a zealot regarding this topic. Perhaps someday someone will ask for my head on a platter, but until that day comes, I'm going to have to pipe up on threads like this one.
I'm not sure what it will take to get this out there so that people will listen, as there's a limited number of different ways to say it. I'm thinking of printing tee-shirts and giving them away, or getting the message tatooed on my forehead:
90% of "carb" problems are "spark" problems.
Everybody bags on Webers and Dellortos, blaming them for everything bad-- but it's really the spark that is 90+% of the "not quite right" problem. Electronically controlling spark in an engine isn't just low-hanging fruit-- it's fruit that is perfectly ripe, unblemished, and has fallen washed and sliced, directly on the plate. It's the single greatest advancement in engine operation in the last 50 years (and there have been some amazing advancements). It's having your cake and eating it too.
The CB Black Box is as simple as it's ever going to get. It can set it up for a perfect "all mechanical" (RPM only) spark curve, or allows vacuum advance with the kind of adjustability one can only dream of with springs and weights. Using one allows the timid or retro-purist to retain the 009, 009 clone, MagnaSpark (or whatever other distributor is back there).
It's $200, and an amazing bit of kit for the money.