Rant: If you're too stupid to put the distributor in the hole correctly...

For the second time in as many cars, I find that the majority of evils I'm experiencing are because a previous owner couldn't figure out how to bring the No. 1 piston up to TDC, check it against the timing tab on the balancer, drop the distributor in the hole, and correctly orient the spark plug wires on top of the distributor cap.

Damn. Is it really that freakin' hard to figure out?! If the gear is off a tooth, you will NOT be able to just move the wires over on the cap to make up for it!

And I'm not even sure he had all the wires on the right post to begin with...

Buy a shop manual. Buy a Motors Manual. Buy a timing light, and then when you drop it in the hole and it's off a tooth, go ahead and fiddle around with it until you get it lined up and in the hole correctly!

Sorry. Rant over.

-Brad

 

I was putting points in my 54 pick up. A technician from the local Chevy dealership came over and asked what points were.

 

tell us how you REALLY feel

 

LOL, I'm there with ya Brad, it's not that hard, but some people struggle, I had one guy argue with me when I told him the reason his BBC wouldn't run is that the timing was 180 off.... I showed him real quick and he was amazed...

 

Been there Done That! Eventually you'll get it and won't think twice about it.

 

When I had the 305 built for my '48 Chevy we had a hell of a time getting it to run right. Turned out the engine builder used the wrong timing cover and the pointer was off a bit. Took us awhile to figure that one out.

 

Im guilty of that also ,I get it One time I put a distributor in and it didnt have enough advance ,Another time I was off and jumping wires didnt work ,I only wait till finger blows off hole ,Check pointer and check with screwdriver .then check rotor with cap .Im getting way better than when I first started ,Im never 180 out anymore .You can also tap the starter till the intake valve opens and closes.Also on points If you fold a match pack in half Adjust points to the high side of distributor cam It will run there ,You will have to dial it in later .Just a roadside Emergency tip.

 

I bought a '68 Corvette years ago and the previous owner (or someone) put the distributor in a couple of teeth off and moved the wires, and some how got it running. I went through hell getting it right because I just didn't expect someone would do that. I know better now. The last time I got fooled was on this same car when the Harmonic balancer deteriorated and slipped about a quarter turn. I just could not get my head around that happening, and again went through hell finally figuring out what was wrong. Sometimes you got to think out of the box. When you hear hoofbeats, it's usually horses, but every once in a while, it's zebras.

 

What difference does it make where you put #1? you can put it anywhere you want as long as #1 is at tdc and the wire lines up with the rotor and their is enough room to swing the vac advance to time it. hell it don't know if it is pointing at #1 or #6.

 

Couldn't get a SBC that someone else built to run worth a damn for the longest time.
Adjusted valves 2 or 3 times. Found true TDC and made sure the timing pointer and balancer marks jived. Tried known good carb. and ignition. Still ran the same-like crap. Finally pulled the timing cover and lo and behold the cam timing was way off. It was a multi keyed crank sprocket and the genuis that put it together lined up the 0 for straight up (no advance) on the crank sprocket with the mark on the cam sprocket instead of the dot for 0. That made if a few teeth off, as in retarded. Not sure how it ran like that at all, but after the repair, it ran like it should have from the get go. The owner was very happy.
I remember learning to time an engine at vo -tech summer school. They had a buch of straight 6's on test stands. One of the tests to pass was to pull the dist. & wires out of one, crank it around a few times, then put it back together and get it running in 5 mins.

 

Not a big deal to me. Maybe I'll get a bargain when they want to sell it because it won't run.

 

I have been building engines for nearly 50 years and that knowledge was not
passed on to me through genetics like it seems it was to people from another planet.
I had to learn it through experience too!

 

i'll never get the timing right in my car it has no clock

since daylight saving time yesterday it runs crappy until we set the clocks back again

 

Imagine the confusion of the poor soul trying to find the timing pointer on an early Chevy six.

 

Brad,

Which car???

 

A friend of mine paid very bottom dollar for a 68 400 Firebird.
Because the 2 Chevy experts did a tune up, fought it for 2 days, but still couldn't get the poncho started.
He ran the wires the other direction (pontiac distributors turn backwards) and drove the car home.
They were pretty pissed.

 

Brad, why does this constitute an "evil" for you? Are these people doing it to your cars? You mentioned "previous owner" so I assume in at least one case it's a car you bought, and likely for a bit less money than if it were running properly. Not sure why you're ranting, unless it took you a while to figure out the problem, and if that's the case, then maybe you shouldn't be throwing stones.

 

Exactly what I was thinking???

 

No, see, you KNEW you had a problem, and you kept at it until you figured out what the problem was and fixed it. You didn't look at and say in a Forrest Gump-like voice "Well gee, that's close enough, Mawma. I'll just work it around like this fer a while and dig into another box o' choco-lots."

That's the way you're supposed to do it... see that it's wrong, figure out why, and fix it correctly. Don't start twisting the distributor around until the wires are close and start moving wires around on the cap until it gets to running about right.

-Brad

 

Took me two weeks once to figure out I had the wires on the dist. rotating backwards. Surprisingly it ran, but not very well that way. But, ran great when I finally figured it out and reversed them. I mostly learn after fucking up something and learn not to do it again.

At lot of times, when you don't have any experienced buddies to help teach you anything, that is reality with older cars. I have found it extremely difficult to find any kind of professional help for mechanical stuff for my old trucks. Especially when I say it is a Studebaker. Mostly I got the 'good luck with that' just before the click. After a while I gave up even trying to get pro help and figured when I fuck something up, I'll fix it it I guess.

I have asked for some hamb help in the past and found this is the best resource available.

 

It's happened with the last two cars I bought... and since there wasn't a timing light handy, and they were running but obviously needed some kind of attention, I figured "Surely, it can't be that the timing is that far off. They swear it runs fine all the time, so maybe it's plugs, or a bad distributor cap, or the carbs are screwed up, or or or."

No, it's that someone dropped the distributor back into a Slant 6 a tooth off, and then tried to make up for it by moving the wires. Problem is, the distributor was a smog motor, and had a permanently fixed restrictor so you couldn't just spin the distributor all the way around to get the timing right. So naturally, someone just moved wires on the cap until it ran, and then proclaimed it good.

Today, it was the Corvair. We set the timing on it, but it ran worse. Couldn't get to it again until today. Lo and behold, the gear was off a tooth, someone tried to make up for it by moving wires around and moving the distributor around. Well, because they were moving wires, they lost track of them and I discovered one was wrong, which means two were wrong. Go ahead and whip out the timing light and correct THAT problem.

How about when the next guy (or you down the road) replaces wires, plugs and cap, and then goes by what's in the book for cap orientation, and now it runs like crap? It's really not hard to get it in the hole the right way, and then go from there.

So that's why the rant. Tired of half-ass work.

-Brad

 

A while back I installed a new Mallory distributor in my 55 Lincoln, (LYB).

I read here on the HAMB that a distributor for a Ford Y block would work.

I checked tdc, installed the distributor and the damned thing ran the gambit of timing issues, it would fire and the stumble, then it would fire out the tail piper, then backfire through the carb, then almost start again.... over and over.

I knew I installed it right, I checked the wires over and over, pulled the distributor out a few times...

And then I counted the teeth on the distributor gears, the new Mallory had 14 teeth, the old LYB distributor had 15 teeth... (so I am a dumbass)

Anyway, the gears would interchange and the car started in short order.

If I had finished reading the whole HAMB post that told me the Ford Y distributor would work, I would have noticed that the post also said that the GEARS needed to be SWAPPED OUT.... Like I said, I am a dumbass...

It took me about 3 hours to install this distributor....

And, I will have to admit to leaving an engine or two 180* out of time when I was in a hurry or just out of patience.... but not in a long time though...

 

Just be thankful that you weren't 17 and got a NEW Pete Jackson gear drive, spent 3 weeks (after school and work) trying to set it right, and confused as hell why it won't run even though your at TDC #1....Stupid fuckin Pete drilled the holes wrong on his gear drive! Good lesson for a 17 year old on how to make things right...

 

Never had too much trouble with SBC's but I rebuilt the four banger in my daughters Escort many years ago. Put it back together and looked in a manual to see firing order and how the wires went on. Did it just like the book showed and it started fine and ran, but when you rev'd it it would stumble and backfire. i knew it had to be a timing/ignition thing. Two days later I turned the page in the manual and saw another wire order for the Escort...turned out there was two firing orders for the Escorts, i don't remember if it was for different years or if it was different between the 1.6 and the 1.9 engine.

 

I didn't want to be THAT GUY. So I did just like Brad said....I got a shop manual.

 

"get off my ass"? Didn't know I was having a specific conversation with you. I was ranting about stupid people doing stupid things. Oh... I see.

The two I've had a problem with are a slant 6, a pancake 6 (Corvair).

And yeah, as the mechanic, I did figure it out. Hence, the rant.

-Brad

 

Somewhere in here there's a moral about being more considerate of what reaction you're going to get from the things you stick your shaft into.


I have an S10 I could never get to run, and I'm guilty of the same deal, I moved the wires over after a distributor swap. As close as I can tell, that truck's problem was someone left the distributor loose, and if the engine shook wrong it would knock the time off far enough so it wouldn't start. I got it to where it would run if you primed it with gas, but by then it had sat long enough the injectors were goofed up and I figured to hell with it since I never could get the title for it anyways.

 

Well yeah, there's that too!

-Brad

 

Last time I was in Cali a friend of mine had been fighting with his `61 impala for about two weeks.
He tells me that it keeps backfiring out the carb. So I`m like "Your timing is off"
He shows me the "Timing Instructions" that he got off the internet.

Well the first thing I notice is the instructions are for a sbf not a chevy!

I couldn`t give him to much flak about it. Hell it was his first self build and didn`t know any better

 

Practice makes perfect for getting a distributor in & out and having it work. I was showed a few tips by an old timer and it was always good to fall back on. Bring the #1 cylinder up on TDC, make sure the rotor points to #1 on the cap. Mark where the vacuum advance points to on the intake manifold. I've even match marked the distributor body to the intake manifold.

Bob