[PonchoV8]

Timing and carb adjustments?
It's in my 78 TA 400 automatic car. Reportedly rebuilt as a .060 block and looking like it probably was freshened at least, at low speeds around town it's fine. When you get it on the interstate for 12-15 minutes it starts faltering. And I don't drive over 55 mph on the interstate either. First you hear a noise like a ticking, then it gets more pronounced. Then it starts loosing some power and if you try to accelerate, it wants to cough thru the carb. When I pull off the highway, it starts running fine again.
So Quick Silver gave me some ideas to start with that might cause this. Lean running issues and timing issues I want to sort out if I can. Something I've never bothered learning is the different timing adjustments. All I've ever worried about is that a car doesn't ping under full throttle. Other than checking the timing with a light, what sets my total timing and how do I check that? Other than swapping the carb to see if another runs better, how would I go about troubleshooting it? Left up for me to decide, I'd just close the mixture adjustments in the base and bring them out a turn and a quarter to start with then go by driving feel from there. This carb has the mixtures screws accessible on it.

What would you start with or suggest? Oh YEAH! The previous owner sealed off the EGR stuff on this engine. It's all missing now. See the red RTV where the valve used to be? Since I moved, I can't even think of where my timing light is.