Hello to all,

I have found myself to be a little stumped with the manifold water heating on a holden red 6. I am running a 186 block, 161 head, 202 manifold and a single stromberg carby with extractors. I have noticed that the base of the carby tends to ice up resulting in very rough running and slow warm up. I have been told in the past that icing is common in this carby but I have doubts that the water is flowing correctly.

The other day I had to pull the thermostat housing off the front of the head and found that where the bottom manifold heater hose connects to the housing and then the block had no route to travel. Is there suppose to be another hole in the head below the large square main intake port to create the flow through these lines. I suspect at the moment that their is a flow lock. I did notice that their was what looked to be a hole that might have been welded up. Should this hole go right through???

On another note, how can I accuratly find tdc from scratch, assuming that nother is correct?? I have had carby and Elec Dizzy overhauled last week but still can't get timing on it's mark. The only way I have found to get the car running smooth is to advance the timing to a staggering 25' advance. It does not ping at this setting which I thought is strange which led me to ask is this normal. Ignition shop said that 10' for this VK dizzy is the norm, but local mech said this is common to to do this. I still get poor accelleration and little top end (110 kph max), even with the 3.08 diff and 5-speed supra box fitted.

Any help would be greatly helpful on this matter..

Cheers all james..



1970 HT UTE

Hi again James.

I didn't answer your 2nd query about the ignition timing..

You have one of 2 problems. Either the balancer has slipped & your base timing mark is incorrect or you have got a vacuum advance signal at idle & it's showing over-advance.

Thankyou Dr Terry and jim,

I replaced the balancer around 12 months ago, and had the elec Dizzy overhauled and regraphed by Performance Ignitions last week, I can't understand how these item could be wrong....

Thanks guys very helpful. Jam

Hi James,

If you had your dizzy regraphed, you will need to ask the shop where you had it done what initial advance to run as they will have set it up having regard to overall advance with initial advance almost being a byproduct of their settings.

Hmmmm...I thought you were trying for 10 degrees becasue that was close to original for your car, not because it was what the shop put on your rebuilt dizzy.

I'd probably try setting it by ear at this point. Advance the dizzy (turn it counter-clockwis