Some very valuable tuning tools are greatly misunderstood. Take the lowly vacuum advance canister. Many enthusiasts dismiss this device as superfluous—or worse—only for emission-controlled engines.

Both initial ignition timing and total ignition timing (advance) are usually expressed in crankshaft degrees as read at the harmonic balancer. These values define where the spark plug fires in terms ...

Every engine has a means of coordinating the timing between the valve train and the rest of the engine. Some engines use a timing chain and some a timing belt. A timing belt has the relatively ...