Originally Posted by b16ahybrid

That my friend is why you should research before dong anything.


mikemerc85 touched on the topic in a "round about way".
I'll explain it in lamens terms as best as I can.
simply put, advancing your timing can and will increase performance if you have the mods to support the extra timing advance. Just turning your distributor (like 90% of the peolpe that advance their timing do) will advance your base timing (or static) is plain reatarded it advances everything (timing for everything). If your going to play with your timing you need to differentiate between cam timing and ignition timing. Cam timing can be addressed by cam gears. You can dial in your cam timing by using "adjustable cam gears" it's a great tool but needs to be done in a controlled environment (dyno). Or you can adjust your ignition timing (when the spark plugs fire) messing with that needs to be done through the ecu in the form of a pigglyback ignition control (btm, trc-1/2 etc) or programable set-up such as hondata or aem. Advancing your timing without the proper mods to support it can and will result in poor fuel economy, higher emissions, and incomplete combustion. And in some cases a blown motor because of pre-ignition or "pinging".
Stock timing is pretty good, it works good for most mild N/A set-ups and mild boosted set-ups. I've ran stock timing on my b16a and boost with no issues (9psi ~ 226whp) but thats in the past.

Stock static timing for the most part is around 16 degree's depending on the motor though. If your thinking of advancing that to 30 degree's......it's not going to happen......


Oh back to what mikemerc85 was saying ... about octane.
The higher the octane the more resistant to burn it is (less likely to ignite in extreem pressures pre-maturely).
You run high octane fuel to prevent pre-ignition. When you advance your timing it increases cylinder pressure, higher cyliner pressure can result in more hp in a controlled environment, but randonly advancing your timing isn't a controlled envoronment, tuning on a dyno is more of a controlled environment.

Sorry if it's all over the place but I keep getting pulled away from the computer and I lose my train of thought..