I am looking for basic advice; I have an AMC 258 in a CJ, 1227747, ASDU, with a Comp Cam X4250H, stock 2bb intake, stock cast iron manifold and free flowing exhaust, the engine is rebuilt, broken-in and running good. It has a manual trans, 32" tires and 3.54 gears.

I am hearing some pinging, initially base timing was set at 0 and bumped up to 15 BTDC at the request of the tuner. After hearing the pinging it was suggested I simply back off the base timing like any other vehicle; if I remember correctly, I am around 5 BTDC. The tuner reviewed the datalogs and said nothing needs to change, just retard the timing.

I am not setup for tuning yet although I plan to order a chip adapter and Burn2 fairly soon.

My question:

Is lowering base timing the correct method to address the pinging or should this be addressed within the ecm?