Jessa: The pinging needs to stop. Driving the snot out of it is NOT a good idea if there is pinging. It can be very destructive. I was more aiming that at the low power and forgot the pinging. Sorry about that.

An unmetered intake leak can lean out the mixture and lead to pinging. My Durango had a service bulletin about pinging from leaky intake manifold gasket. Bad plug wires as well can cause crossfiring resulting in pinging.

I took a look at it the (mostly) dark, as suggested. No visible sparks.

Will post later when I get more info.

Jessa, I'm still a bit suspicious of the fact that your distributor is adjusted all the way to the end of the slot(or nearly so). It couldn't hurt to double-check the timing per the WSM. Vac leaks are easy to check for. Also you can double-check your cam timing in about 10 minutes with a 10mm and 27mm socket in hand. This is MUCH easier to do on our cars than on the 32V cars.

That was it! I'm getting normal performance without pinging after further adjustment.

Of course, now that my shark is healthy again, I am sick. We'll get a mountain run together eventually...

I am hearing more about distributor problems 80-84 USA cars where the hall signal is too weak and timing becomes erratic requiring unusual adjustments of the distributor to get it to run at all then when timing is reset correctly it will run great for a while ! Also the green wire which carries that signal and the plug where it connects to the harness fall apart.

Are you saying that I may need to replace some of those parts? How do I tell?

If your 'green wire' is no longer green, it's time to change it. Also check the connectors at either end, if they look brittle then change the wire. (My connectors crumbled when I went to unplug them.)

I guess its time, then. Its more of a black/brown/green calico at this point.

Thanks

Couldn't hurt at all. My car still ran fine with the green wire looking like what you see below, and then after I started messing with nearby wires it began to intermittently ground against the cam tower, resulting in kind of a BWWWAAA-uuuuhhhhhh...<stop>. behavior. It doesn't have to look as bad as mine did to need replacing!

http://members.rennlist.com/sharkski...oGreenWire.jpg

On my '79 I had to replace the distributor as the mechanical advance had failed. With the bad distributor I had to time it all the way to one of sthe tops to get it to run reasonably. In my 914 days I typically saw the vacume advance fail. You can test them both easily. To test the mechanical advance: remove the cap, and twist the rotor. It should twist easily in one direction but snap quickly back under spring tension. Test the vacume advance by looking for function (also with the cap off) and check for leaking with a syringe or vacume pump.

Good call Dave, Jim, PorKen and karl! Sure to help Jessa keep the car running good again for quite a while. I brought my timing light to Beth's party but didn't have a chance to look at your car.