Quick question to anyone who is willing to listen. I have an 86 244dl with 335,000 miles on it. I recently rebuilt the head due to warpage caused by a blown head gasket. Where I use to live the terrain was flat and the temperature was in the upper 80's F. I set the timing to about 15 degrees before top dead center and the car ran quite well (which was the opposite of what I expected as the compression is quite high now since the head was milled down .017inches which is far in excess of volvo's conservative .011 maximum safe mill). Now that I have moved to the mountains and the weather is cooling down (upper 30's lower 40's F) I notice that when I start the car up in the morning, the first few seconds I get 10-15 pops eminating from under the hood somewhere. The car starts perfectly with only about 5 engine revolutions via the starter before catching. Other than that, the pops subside after 5 seconds of running or so. I also encounter extremely low power when climbing grades steeper than about 30degrees (which there are quite a few of here), but there is no audible ping or knock coming from the engine at these times, but I struggle to maintain speed and end up loosing it in the end. Could this be a product of too advanced timing causeing inaudable detination that the knock sensor "hears" and then retards the timing yeilding poor power output? Also is the poping I hear on cold start-up possibly a more pronounced occurance of this? I hope this is a simple matter as the old brick needs to last a bit longer. I am tracking a couple of digital timing lights on e-bay (I lent mine to a friend who subsiquently disappeared...the friend that is). If there is anyone in the Pittsburgh PA area who can help please speak up, it would be appreciated.