Alright so I've made a little progress by adjusting timing. What I did was I aligned the cam gear with the timing mark on the back plate by turning the crank via the crank bolt (this also aligned the mark on the harmonic balancer with the 0 degrees marking although it did seem to be off a bit like maybe half a tooth?). I then loosened the tensioner and removed the belt off the cam gear. I turned the cam gear a tooth clockwise and put the belt back on. I then realigned the cam gear spot with its timing mark. I then looked at the harmonic balancer, the mark on the balancer was as expected no longer in line with the 0 degree mark, but assuming I had corrected the skipped tooth, the engine should have been at tdc if the cam was ligned up which it was. So I marked on the harmonic balancer in line with the 0 degree mark to essentially make a new, correct timing mark (balancer may have slipped a bit. I couldn't use the crank pinion key to align for tdc because my lower timing cover is still on). I then used my new mark to set the ignition timing to 14 degrees btdc (didn't require much distributor rotation).
I've read that advancing cam timing should move the powerband down which is what I wanted (car was sluggish until 4800 suggesting I skipped a tooth). I assumed shifting the cam clockwise was advancing the timing.
So after performing this change I will list what has now happened so you guys can see what you think.
Good:
- acceleration is more consistent now. Boost no longer climbs super rapidly after 4800rpm and boost is now built consistently throughout the rpm range.
- vacuum is now 20mmHg warm where as it was only 18mmHg before
Bad:
-idle rpm is no longer consistent (climbs to 2000-2500 on its own and only a blip of the throttle will drop the it back down where it begins climbing again. This also happens driving while stopped) could this be part of the ECUs "learning procedure"?
- engine began misfiring at idle which was only fixed/improved by richening up the base mixture (wideband read 13.0 at idle once misfiring had stopped).
So what do you guys think? Had I skipped a tooth before or am I now running my cam advanced like 10 degrees? LOL