Thought I would give you an update on my car. I have been messing with it for several days and have it to the point I am 90% happy. A friend suggested checking the distributor cap for cracks and it looked great other than corrosion on the brass tips. Checked my inventory and found a new one with aluminum tips and sorry I am not a fan of those, so cleaned the other one with contact cleaner. Thought they told me they put new plugs in it while doing the head, but thought while I was into it, I would pull a plug. Well, it was an Autolite (again not a fan) and found it gap at about .030 not .040. Check my inventory again and had a new set of AC M8's so you know what took place with them. Checked the points and they were good. Have a vintage vacuum/fuel pump gauge, so hooked it up and it showed late timing. Corrected that put everything back together and done a test drive and things worked nicely. Only thing I want checked yet is the valve clearance because if plugs were set incorrectly who knows what the valves are. With that being said I would like to know where you set yours. Manual says .006-.008 for intake and .013-.015 for exhaust. Thanks

@clarence-w-forsythe Clarence, great to hear.  i always go in the middle on a motor that hasnt been rebuilt and has a lot of miles. Very important to have motor up to temp, maybe drive around for 20-30 minutes then set them.

@clarence-w-forsythe

Hi Clarence

Chevrolet's own shop manual showed that the valve clearances in a properly warmed up engine would level out at the exact same clearances as when stone cold.

For that reason I and many others set the valves cold and leave it at that.

It's much nicer than working on a hot engine, and you can take your time and not worry about how much things have cooled off by the time you set the last of them.

For heavily loaded engines such as in trucks, Chevrolet recommended setting the valves at .010 intake and .020 exhaust.

I think .020 might be a little excessive, so I add .002 to the high end of each and set at .010 and .017.

That said, if you want to stick to standard car specs, I'd go with .008 and .015.