VE Tables, where to start

[bruce plecan]

Geez, OK OK

Hopefully when starting with any custom ecm or drivetrain combination.
You'll have something to start with, and better yet aleast from the same
engine series.  If not then we'll cover both anyway, again GM OEM,
again that's just what I know.
Reguardless of what your working on you have to pick a spot to start
with,  your just going to have to get your feet wet, and pull numbers
out of the hat to start with, the more ya do the smaller the hat gets,
cause you can rule out some things.  
For me, and what I do, I start at idle, for a SBC the initial timing is 
6 degrees before BTDC.  How do you get 6 d without a timing light
on the dist GM style there is a set of little arrows inside the distrib.
Onna V-8, 8 on the reluctor, and 8 on the sensor ring
the engine fires when the arrows are ever so slightly past each other
in the direction of rotation.  Why, it cranks easy hot or cold, and the
second you get to about 400rpm when the engine is running your
at ecm control.  Less than that and on a cold day the engine will
kinda windmill when it's cranking.   Then I'd just fill in the 400-800
areas of timing with 16d.  Also I'd fill in the lower rpm VE tables with
30, and try to start the engine hopefully with out too much work from
that point you'll at least be able to warn up the engine enough to
wake up the O2 sensor, and look at the scanner, and see where
the BL is, AND IAC Counts.  The IAC Counts are a vaccum leak.
So they are critical to a decent idle. 
  Now you have some idea of wher the mixture is, and what the 
Kpa is from reading the scan tool.  You can't (again from my
experience) run the same numbers evey where at idle, on the
high side of idle Kpa I go a little richer,  IE with an engine
that idles at 60Kpa if it is 30 there, at 65-70 it would be 32,
and at 50-55 28.    Yes the 30 is alot but its easy to go lean, 
and clean up the idle, then having stall all the time, and having to
wait anyway for the prime shot to burn out. 
  So rather quickly lean things down till the O2 is swinging, the
IAC is less than 10, and you have a min idle speed, 
  For the inital butterfly opening I cut a trip of paper a 1/4" wide
and set the min idle so that pulls thru the butterfly to throttle
opening with a min of effort.  If it tears the paper open it up. 
  So now the engine starts and will idle,  hey it's something
More to follow, if someone sees anything I missed, or has a
comment again feel free to e-mail me.
HTH Bruce     Gotta take a break the cone shaped hat 
                       is falling in my eyes, and  trying to hold it 
                      up and type with one finger is tiring