# Timing



## Acceler8ter (Feb 5, 2005)

Last night I was talking to 3 kids, all of them driving 1st gen MR2's. Anyway, they were talking and said they retarded the cam(s) 15 degrees. Which immediately prompted me to saying "Why the hell did you RETARD it? Why didn't you advance it?"

To which one responded, "Your not supposed to advance it because you can break a valve and retarding it you get more air and more power."

This really didn't sound right to me. The valve thing I can understand if the car has an interference motor (I'm not sure if MR2's do or don't). But the latter part about power doesn't. Otherwise why would it be so common to advance it? Isn't retarding used for turbo'd cars?

Anyway... these guys were idiots. We were laughing at them. They said something about drifting... followed by one of them taking off and just driving fast like an idiot around corners (Very unsafe... he almost understeered into a fence). He said he was the best driver in Utah. He couldn't even break the back lose (sad). Then he said the lot was "to small." But my friends have seen me drift...erm... ass-drag my Sentra in the same place many a time (At least I only do it when there are no cars in the lot either!). Anyway... I got a lot more to say about them BUT I'm rambling...


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## Sanjuro (Mar 8, 2005)

I'm not an expert in this, but back in the days when I had my 86 (with the same 4A-GE) and retarded the timing by accident, the motor ran like poop. The 4A-GE as far as i know is not an interfierence motor, so valve clearence is not a problem.

As for drifting no I've never seen a first gen mr2 drift, aside from the ones that attempted and ended up spinning ass first into the guard rail from the driver doing lift off countersteer.

Tell your friends there are people out there who'd appreciate their cars more, so they should give me their mr2 and drive a metro instead


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## Acceler8ter (Feb 5, 2005)

OMG, that's funny. They even said their car has been running like shit lately. Now I know why.

Yeah, trying to watch him drift was pathetic. Me and my friends were clowning them so bad. They were all telling me to go out and drift in front of them to show em how its done. I would have, but there were two guys in SUV's sitting in the middle of the lot and my tires only have like 2 MM tread depth left...

I'll make sure to tell them that though. :cheers:


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