
gennady gurov







Making a Spark Advance Table
You can get a base starting point for the VE table by using the 'Tables/VE Table/Tools/VE Specific/Generate Table' function of MegaTune, using the peak horsepower and torque figures for your engine.
For timing, we don't have a generator written yet. The basic principles are to determine a maximum advance for your engine and work backwards from there with heuristics ('rules of thumb'):
older engines (1960s up to 1990 or so) with two valves - max advance = 36°
newer two-valve engines - max advance = 30°
three or four valve engines - max advance = 26°
then adjust for bore size:
under 3.5" (89mm) - subtract 3°
between 3.5" and 4.000" (101.6mm) - no adjustment
over 4.001" (+101.6mm) - add 3°
then adjust for the fuel:
regular - subtract 2°
mid-grade - subtract 1°
premium - no adjustment
That gives us a maximum advance figure. It you have an aftermarket combination with a good squish area and optimized quench, subtract another 2°. If you have a flathead, add 3° or 4° or more.
We will use this to fill in the table at 100 kPa from 3000 rpm to the redline.
From idle to 3000 rpm, we want the advance (@100kPa) to increase fairly linearly from the idle advance to the maximum advance. idle advance is really a matter of tuning, but assume 8° to 16° in most cases, with stock engines being on the lower end, and 'hotter' engines being on the upper end.
So if we have a hot engine with 36° maximum advance and 16° idle advance (at 800rpm), the spark table might look like this for 100kPa:
100 16° 16° 18° 24° 28° 36°
rpm 600 800 1000 1500 2000 3000
Below 100 kPa, we add 0.3° per 1 kPa drop. So for example, if our total spark at 100kPa and 4000 rpm was 36°, the advance at 50 kPa would be:
36° + 0.3° x (100-50) = 51°
and the advance at 45 kPa and 800 rpm would be:
16° + 0.3° x (100-45) = 32.5°
However all of these would need to be tuned, and it often helps idle stability to limit the advance at idle to under 20°.
Finally, for boosted engines, you subtract 0.3° of advance for every kPa above 100 (it's not a coincidence that this is the same factor as for the 'vacuum' adjustments). Because 101.3kPa=~14.7psi, this works out to ~2° per pound of boost. It is often the case that you want to limit the retard under boost as well, typically so that it takes out no more than about ˝ of the maximum advance at 100 kPa.
None of these will give you the 'right' values for your engine though, and like the VE table calculator, are just a relatively safe starting point. They should be somewhat closer than starting with an empty table, though!

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Richard Greer



if i remember correctly isnt heidi using a srt4 timing advance map? well if its working good (read:car running) use that as a staring map and then tune from there. I was always scared to tune my spark timing so when I finally got to the point of needing it, when i put the first 50trim on my neon, I got it professonally tuned so I cant really offer any tuning advice except for what i already said.
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