My good friend, Steve Nelson, is replacing the V4, DOHC Ford B block in his lakester with one of the Arias four cylinder setups with his new design hemi head. He is looking for the F fuel lakester record.
Jack, regarding your blown alky motor, one of the possible reasons that it liked 30 degrees could be that you probably didn't have a big pop up on the piston to make compression. The pop up gets in the way of the incoming charge and typically requires more ignition lead. Just thought.
Rex