Quote:
Originally Posted by butler57
also...when I cranked it over to find TDC the rotor was pointing to the passenger side headlight. I re-attached the distributor cap with the #1 cap over rotor and then re-confirmed the firing order. Does it really matter where the rotor points as long as it's at the #1 cap and the firing order is accurate?
|
If you were building an engine from scratch or were installing a new cam, etc - then you would need to find TDC. Since your engine was running fine, albeit a little rich as you noted, there is no need to 'find' TDC - you've found it when the line on the balancer aligns with the 0 on the timing tab (as noted though, that is only 1 of 2 possible TDCs for the 4-stroke engine). My point is that you don't need to re-find it if all you did was twist the distributor (without pulling it up/out) to the point that it won't start.
Can you describe what you mean by "re-attached" the cap so that the #1 spark plug wire tower is aligned over the rotor tip at the point where you think it's over TDC? (specifically the "re-attach" part). A Distributor cap only fits how it fits, it can't just be rotated while disconnected from the distrib body and then re-attached where convenient. Or, are you really trying to say that you re-wired the cap so that the #1 spark plug wire is now in the cap tower that is over the rotor tip at the point where you determined is at TDC?
What rpmerf is describing (correct me if I'm wrong rpmerf) is that IF your distrib is off by a tooth-ish (relative to the cam gear), you 'can' twist the distributor (with cap attached and all - and still installed, just as if you were setting initial timing on the engine) enough to compensate and set timing for it to run - or, if off by more than a tooth or so, you can re-wire the distrib cap so that #1 wire is over the rotor at TDC for cyl #1. I believe that is what he's referring to - but that is not what you've described because you mention re-attaching the cap in a new spot, which doesn't sound right to me (unless you really meant you re-wired the distirb cap and then reinstalled it).
So please clarify when you get a chance so maybe we can help
a little more.
The bottom line is that if it was running and all you did was rotate the distributor one direction or another, without lifting it out, the only thing you need to do to correct
that issue is to rotate it back to where it was. Since you don't know where it was, that's why we recommend rotating it through a range in the area we mentioned - the direction anything is pointing and that whole discussion was to help you cross-check stuff - but it's really irrelevant since this was a running engine before this happened - so the ONLY thing you need to do to correct what happened to the distributor is to rotate it back to where it was. At a minimum, the way the wires lay and twist when you rotate it should give a rough idea where it "was" - i.e. if 1,3,5,7 are all stretched and 2,4,6,8 are all slack, it probably needs to be rotated clockwise, etc. You should not need to re-attach the distrib cap some other way (if that's even possible) or re-wire the cap - only rotate. If that doesn't fix it, it's something else in this situation - i.e. flooded, etc.
The safest (or maybe "most productive") way to troubleshoot is to change only 1 variable at a time - now that you've re-attached the cap differently somehow (or re-wired the cap), you've induced more variables when the whole reason it wasn't starting when you did the rotation method may have just been that it's flooded. The scenario now is that if you change plugs - and it still doesn't start, you won't know whether you fixed a flooding issue but induced a timing issue because of whatever you did with the cap. I'd put the cap back like it was, clean the plugs, and re-try the dizzy twist while cranking method to try to get it to start. Sorry, wish this was working out better for you! We'll get her goin, don't worry!