Your uncle is right about the way all of the 70s cars ran.I bought new in the 70s a 73 350 Chevelle,75 Monte Carlo
350,75 318 Dodge van that I customized,73 307 Chevy pick and none of them ran good when new.First thing I did
was dual exhaust as only the Monte came new with a cat.Then I started playing with the timing like your uncle and
the air induction was always restrictive on all of them so that was always modified.I managed to get all of them
running much better and the gas mileage usually improved drastically too.Out of all of them the dodge van and the chevy pickup ended up running the best.
All of the manufactures were kinda quessing at things back then and they really believed we would have to take the
crap vehicles they built.I give honda and toyota credit for the huge improvement in the quality of our american
vehicles.They simply built better cars and the big 3 as they used to be called had to improve or lose and we all
know what happened to them just recently.
My 2 Cents
Jim Gordon