[chiphead]

It's all in the combination and intent. While a full-race 496 might run great with locked timing for being consistant, a street 389 is gonna run like ***** with locked timing due to low RPM overadvance.

What works for me may not work for others. But I've found that running as much base timing as possible without starter kickback and then 36* total works best for my street/strip engines. The ideal is to have peak cylinder pressure at 12-14* ATDC, which is a function of basic physics, not choice. This means picking a base timing that approaches the ideal at idle, then lighting the mixture earlier and earlier as RPM increases. The rate of the optimal advance for any one engine depends on the parts chosen for that one engine and what that engine is asked to do.

Since a street engine is loaded by moving the car between 1000-4000 RPM, that is where we care what the rate and amount of advance is.