I have an 88 samurai with a 1.6 tracker 8 valve. When I got it It had the vacuum advance unhooked and a bolt in the hose. I figured it was just to set the timing or something but my friend just bought the same year samurai that had the vacuum advance unhooked and plugged the same way. Does this sound odd to anyone and could it be why it idles so ruff? Also does anyone know how to time one of these? I'm used to harmonic balancers. Also whats a stock 1.6 supose to be timed at? Thanks guys

find a variable timing light and see what it is doing, it should go from 8 deg to about 32 deg when you rev it.

You can find timing instructions for the 1.6 motors at www.kick-fix.com, along with a lot of other 1.6 related information.

As far as vacuum advance goes - disconnecting it & blocking it - just disables the vacuum advance which is primarily a fuel economy thing - if the timing is correctly set it will not cause a rough idle.

But it should still be hooked up right?

I am not going to say yes to that without knowing the history of the vehicle and the details of the conversion.

You need to understand that Suzuki never sold a 1.6 engined Samurai, someone put an engine from a SidKick or a Tracker in a Samurai, and there are many different ways to do things when doing an engine swap - just as an example - does your engine have a 1.3 head or a 1.6 head, 1.3 distributor or 1.6 distributor, is it carburetted with a factory carb, or any one of several different third party carburettor options, or is it fuel injected with throttle body injection or multi-port - and the list goes on.

Whoever did the job disconnected the line and plugged it with a bolt - and I'm pretty sure they had a reason - I just don't know what it is.

It's a 1.6 head on a 1.6 tracker motor but it has a harley cv carb. Other wise stock 1.6 stuff

Here's an article on ignition timing & vacuum advance, it also discusses the differences between ported vacuum & manifold vacuum.

http://www.corvetteactioncenter.com/forums/c3-technical-performance/60830-ported-vs-manifold-source-vacuum-advance.html

After reading the article, you'll probably want to reconnect the vacuum line - before you do, ask yourself this - is the distributor originally curved for ported vaccum or manifold vacuum, (I don't have the answer) and where are you connecting it - does the CV carb have a vacuum port?

If it was originally manifold vacuum and you can reconnect the distributor to the original vacuum port on the manifold - I would go for it - just remember that you may need to readjust your igntion timing, if it was increased to compensate for the lack of vacuum advance.