[Hemicolt]

Okay. Fuel lighting in the pipes means low or retarded timing. Fuel is pulled in on the intake stroke, compressed on the compression stroke. At this time the plug fires and pushes the piston back down into the cyl., then everything is pushed out of the exhaust valve on the up stroke. I know that you know this, but I'm illustrating. If everything is perfect, the above happens with no side affects.
Now, if timing is retarded the fuel lights late and depending on how much fuel and air are in the cyl., it can still be burning on the exhaust stroke. A 283 Chevy bore and stroke can't pull no where near as much fuel in as a 500 plus inch motor. Take into account .700 to .800 lift cams, etc. and your moving a ton of fuel and air. 10 to 12 degrees of initial isn't enough time to burn it all. Therefore you get fuel burning on the exhaust stroke. This burning fuel enters the exhaust pipes and you get real, glowing pipes. The fuel lighting in the pipes continues to make the engine temps. rise with each rev. of the motor. Pretty soon you get pinging, overheating, etc. You can back off the timing enough in a stoke motor to make the exhaust hotter than hell.
This problem was there with every type of timing advance system. It was burning down at 22 degrees initial. I locked out the dist., rolled the balancer to 32 b.t.d.c and installed the dist. dead on number 1. Every single problem went away.
A friend of mine has a turbo Mustang that ran 9.70's and he drove it on the street. It ran like crap when he first got it together. The pipes would glow so red hot, that you could take screw driver and push a dent into the hot spots. The thing was melting plugs at idle. He tried everything to fix the problem. I asked him to try locking out the dist. and put a bunch of timing in it. If I had not seen this with my own eyes I would not have believed it. 41 degrees of timing, made the thing run right and run cool. They drive the car all the time on the street and have 0 problems.
I hope this helps you to understand what I am saying here. You have to have enough TIME to burn everything that comes into the cyl. Can anyone make 10 to 12 degrees and a VA work on a big motor? I'll never say they can't. I'm just saying that more times than not, people have problems making that deal work.
Here is someting I sent you in the last p.m. that I think everyone can learn from. These are not my words. Enjoy:


I've been on this planet for four decades now. I've picked up on a lot of things and some of the best advice I've ever received, is "sometimes it's better to believe what you see, not what you think".

Every weekend at racetracks across the country some of the best minds in the business just can't agree on which theory is correct to improve the performance of the vehicle in question. That's just the way it is, performance improvement is a constantly varying science. There are a lot of variables in any equation and if you read or take in information supplied by a source and the source in question is a "been there done that" type of person and you disagree with them....chances are you better keep it to yourself.

I've had customers, racers, engineers and even landscapers send me and offer me up a lot of pretty bizarre ideas and technologies that worked. I was talking to Bret Kepner's cameraman the other day and guess what? He had a good idea he was carrying around in his head. Yes, a cameraman. Not exactly a "been there done that kind of guy" in racing. But, if the late Smokey Yunick were to tell you that the cameraman's idea was correct, then you can bet Smokey tried it and it worked. Back to the quote: "Sometimes it's better to believe what you see, not what you think".

In my spare time I race alcohol powered go-karts. "It's 90 mph, seat of the pants, let it all hang out stress relief". I even have a dynamometer in the shop to dyno test my single cylinder wonders. These single cylinder engines, originally designed to spin 2800 rpm now spin in excess of 7500 rpm. But the really great thing I discovered while testing them, is the repeatability of the engine from pull to pull. Yes, you guessed it, what a great engine for testing theories. I've logged more hours dynoing those engines with different fuels and atomization patterns, booster concepts and fuel air calculations than I have racing them. Now I know why the octane ratings RON/MON numbers are derived from a single cylinder engine. I've developed some technologies that made great power on the dyno but were slower on the racetrack and vice versa. Yes, I have a full data acquisition system with track mapping on my kart so I can measure rates of acceleration etc...yes I plug a laptop into my kart after every race. It looks silly but that's racing these days. The bottom line is, if you're standing around the racetrack scratching your head and some old timer or even a local kid that's never touched a car before tells you "I saw that one time and here's what worked for this guy". Listen to him, because sometimes a voice of experience is more valuable than a voice of theory based assumption.