Thread: 383 Stroker low vacuum and sluggish

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36sedan, Thanks for the procedure for finding TDC. Just bought the piston stop tool but think I might try your way instead since I’ve never done it.
Just did a compression test and every cylinder came back at around 120. Lowest was cylinder 8 at 118 and highest was cylinder 7 at 122. Should I be worried that they are very low but are all consistent?
Cylinder 5 and 6 have extremely tight clearances for the spark plug boot and they were slightly melted so I replaced all the spark plugs with NGK UR5 shorty plugs and gapped them to .035 and have new wires on order. The plugs didn’t look bad, slightly fouled.
Before pulling everything I played around with the carb and timing some more and got vacuum to sit at a steady 11.5-12 inches, timing was still around 55 though. The idle isn’t rough and don’t hear any pinging or knocking.
And no I don’t have a high rise intake manifold. Just a basic edelbrock performer. Distributor is a pertronix flame thrower.