440 poor running
 

Put together a 73 Challenger last year its a 440 performance build ,it was fresh never fired before I bought it .Never got the car to run the way I wanted it to all summer .I don't have the specs on what cam Was used ,it has adjustable push rods ,I had the oil pan off engine looked bored out with new pistons ,it just takes too much timing to keep it running smooth ,if you try to back it off motor feels bond up it stumbles at low speeds until it catches then the car takes off pretty good .Actually drove car to local cruise nights this summer most times it's pinging while accelerating,but when you back off the timing it runs worst . Talking with co workers about this problem thinking its off a tooth on distributor??Make sense ???Motor doesn't smoke ,less than 1,000 miles on motor ,can I pull up that shaft with pliers to try line it up better with #1cylinder ,first 440 I'm use to GM where you can move the oil pump shaft ,just trying to get car to run better ,car has headers and 750 carb but I feel its timing ,stock mopar eltronic ignition all new thanks Gregg

What do the plugs look like ?? Sounds too lean... Maybe a flat cam if it was not broken in properly

You really need to find out your distributors mechanical advance with no vacuum advance hooked up. That distributor may have 24 degrees of mechanical advance and with 10-12 initial it should work fine. With a larger cam it may like 20 or more initial, 20 + 24 = 44 = pinging. Your mechanical advance may need to be limited.

Moving the oil/dist. drive does nothing about timing just moves the vacuum canister to clear surrounding engine parts and allow clearance for adjustment.

My advice is to do a proper accurate TDC and mark Harmonic Balancer, record initial timing then rev engine until full timing seen then do the math and adjust distributor internals accordingly.

Do you know what the cr of this build is? If not and if you're using 87 octane, I would try some 93 or race gas once to see if affected the pinging(spark knock, detonation). Long term pinging will eventually crack a piston. As Coronet 500 said, dist tooth placement will not affect anything as long as you can turn the housing as much as needed.