I want to do the base timing on a delco voyager distributor. I know that I have to use the lock out wire harness . The Dennis Moore marine chevy book says to ground the third wire on the lock out wire harness but when I go on utube or google ask on web most say that you gave to power it 12v . I dont want to burn out the inside module. Any body know which I should do?

on crusader inboards that use that dist, there is a 2 wire timing plug that you unplug and flip over to time, flip back over when done..not sure on others

Set total. No timing thing a ma bob needed.

Bring to 4k briefly to see where advance stops rpm wise. Typically it is well under that

Reason for timing 'plug' to put in base timing mode is because the EST module starts advance below most motors idle rpm.

That's my experience. Others may vary - but doubtful (lol) as the EST timing advance is rpm based only.

Good EST read.

http://bpi.ebasicpower.com/downloads...structions.pdf

Thanks guys for the info.The reason for asking is I bought this distributor a few years back and installed. I did the base timing according to a performance book which said that i have to ground the black on timing harness wire to do base. Unplugged all finished great.Didn't use the boat that year and didnt use it last year until fall.Wasn't getting performance I thought I would started playing with props and got better but not there.I figured it is the 136 gears in the drive so over the winter I bought a 26p bravo. Now this week I uncovered the boat and started to tune and noticed that timing is not advancing. I should have double checked the timing after unplug first time but my bad i didn't.I think I might have damaged the modual by grounding because every place I read says black to pos except the book i have.Im going to replace modual and try total timing it. Im hoping this might give me the performance im looking for. Thanks again....

Don't replace it with a cheap box store generic module, many of them don't have the correct curve (or any curve). Delco, Mallory modules do (I've checked both).

try setting the total timing...