My '93 pickup 22RE engine has electronic control (ECU) timing control. I have tried everything to get it to perform as well as my '84 pickup 22RE which has vacuum advance. On the '93, the timing seems to move around and I have to run the timing later than it should be in order to keep the pistons from rattling at initial acceleration. I've adjusted and even tried a different throttle position sensor, and a different ECU. I have an '88 vacuum advance distributor I'm tempted to try out and bypass the crappy computer controlled timing. Anybody have any experience with this?

 

Your static timing should be set at whatever the FSM recommends it doesn't move around. Electronic advance is much more acurate than any vacum or centrifugal advance dizzy so it is imposible to get poorer performance from it. I think the issue is that you are comparing differn't engines not just differnt spark control techniques. You can't just say your 91 is slower than your 85 because of the dizzy...engines are never identical from day one, chuck in 20 years of abuse and you get two objects that are incomparable.