[Bruce Compton, Canada]

Tinker: You sound like my buddy in town that has an older 350 Chevy that gets 6 MPG and always is on the verge of overheating. 10 years ago he asked me to look at it , and I discovered then that the vacuum advance was not working and strongly suggested that this most likely was his problem. Now 10 years later it still gets 6 MPG and overheats just the same because he read somewhere in a glossy magazine about some hot-rod with a distributor that did not use a vacuum advance, so thinks his street machine can do just fine without one also.
To operate properly and get decent fuel mileage ,any older street driven vehicle needs vacuum advance, even flatheads that require a maximum of only 24 degrees total. If a flathead or anything else seems to run better without it, then it has way too much initial timing advance already. Listen to Bubba, he knows what he is talking about. Bruce