Compression too high on 2L 8v

Hi Miles...you have a reply to your PM with timing details.

Two of the three should'nt be attempted for sure...

Decking pistons will reduce the squish clearance and can lead to pinking & detonation issues.

The same reason you should'nt use a thicker gasket or spacer...even in turbo applications...the squish zone opens up too much...any rolling road tuner that suggests using 2 gaskets is'nt the best person to be tuning your engine to start with.

The 195psi cranking compression is fine...maybe the tuner is thinking back to the days of Austin 1100's on 8:1 c.r's & 150 psi cranking pressure.

The cam timing needs setting to lift @ tdc...the advance/retard markings mean nothing unless you know what your advancing or retarding from. Approx 15thou more lift on the inlet than the exhaust is the ballpark starting figure.

 

Here's a thought: could it be a dodgy idle switch causing the random missing? At idle the revs jump up and down, its not hunting smoothly, its jumping.

 

Definitely not the idle switch that's the problem or the higher cam.

I've also noticed when you unplug the blue temp sensor it runs a lot smoother than with it plugged in, any one got any idea why this is?

 

I believe I've found the source of my problems.

The dizzy cap I had was slightly too big and was rocking aroud on the dizzy.
Bugger.

 

Miles while that may have been a contributing factor I really suggest you get the cam timed up properly as it will make a massive difference and isn't really something you can easily do by ear or feel unless you have years and years of practice and even then the experts do it using a DTI to measure valve lift at TDC

Whereabouts are you located mate? If you are not a million miles away I could come give you a hand maybe if time allows?

 

I've put the standard cam back in for the moment, gonna see if I can borrow a DTI from work to do the cam properly.

 

definitely do the timing properly mate. -4 and +4 seem very odd to me.

 

Have only read this ( don't have a vernier cam pulley myself) but -2 and +2 seem to be the norm for fine tuning,rather than change the cam set it to "0"
and see.