Reply to "Car will not fire"

Patt,

If you have a strong spark, it could be that your dist gear rollpin has sheared. This happened to me, but at a higher RPM than idle (I was cruising along).

If you run out of things to check and want to check this, do the following:

Remove the dist cap and make a reference mark as to where the rotor is pointing. Maybe it's pointing straight back at the carb, put a piece of tape on the carb exactly where it's pointing. If it's not the rollpin, this is where you'll line the rotor back up to when you put the dist back in.

Next, make a 'slash' mark at the base of the dist and engine block with a sharpie marker. This indexes the dist to the block. If it's not the rollpin, you just line up the mark on the base of the dist with the mark on the block after you've dropped the dist back in and your timing is restored.

When the dist is out, you'll see a little circle on the dist gear. If you can see light through the circle (rollpin), the rollpin is intact. If you can't, the pin has sheared and your timing was all out of whack.

If your rollpin is good, just put the dist back in, line up the marks, tighten it down and keep looking! If it's not, carefully clamp the dist in a vice gear down and use a piece of wood and small hammer to knock the gear off. Smooth out any burrs that may be on the shaft with a file. When installing the new rollpin, DO NOT 'double up' or put a smaller rollpin inside the right sized one. DO NOT put a solid pin instead of the rollpin. Intead of the pin failing in the future, something else may have to give, like the oil pump shaft.

To install the dist, bring the #1 cylinder up to Top Dead Center on the power (spark) stroke (O degrees on the balancer). Line the rotor up to the #1 cylinder on the dist cap and tighten the cap down. Start the motor and set the timing.

I hope it's something simpler and you don't have to go through all this, but if you do it's not all that hard to do. You could have it done in an hour.

Good luck!

Michael