I recently refurbished the distributer on my 72 1800. One of the things that was broken on it was the vacuum retard among other things. Well now every thing works perfectly on the distributer including the vacuum retard. As soon as the vacuum retard was pluged in the engine started to overheat at low speeds. This is odd because it is funcioning as it was disigned. when the engine is not under a load it retards the timing. As soon as the engine is under a load or the throttle is opened the timing goes back to normal. I know that it has to be the retarded timing causing the overheating but it seems to be set right. With the vacuum disconnected and the idle at 900RPM the timing is 10 before TDC but with the vacuum connected it is 0 TDC. Open the throttle at all and it goes straight to 10 BTDC. Increase RPM and timing advances normaly. Sounds normal right. I diconnected it for now but since I had it fixed I would like to solve the problem so that I can reconnect it.

Thad Gilbert
Seattle, WA