Car Won't Start

I would wait on a few more responses, but....

Pulling your distributor is not a hard thing to do - but do you have a good timing mark you can see on your front harmonic balancer?

You certainly want to make sure you know where things are supposed to be before you pull things out.

If you can, it wouldn't be a bad thing to pull the dizzy out, check the pin (and why not replace it?)

To get it to seat easily, just bump the starter a little while pushing on the distributor body (make sure you are not holding the coil wire....) and it will drop right in.

I would re-time it and make sure it's not 180 out, I have seen this a few times.

Before you so anything, use a power timing light on the engine.

Turn the engine over with the light on and connected and see where it is firing on the balancer.

IF it is firing but is 30 to 40 degrees off, the plug wires are out of phase in the cap.

Move the wires over one position in the cap, then see if it fires.

YOU have to determine which way to go with them, clockwise or counterclockwise.


IF the roll pins are bent but the distributor is still turning, you can still get it in time and it will still run.

If you feel more comfortable in pulling out the distributor to confirm they are ok, then do it.

Irregardless of the discussion about them, it is not that common of an occurrence.

What kind of a distributor is in the car?


Usually if it is out of time this much and you have confirmed that it is firing the plugs, you should hear it fire through the exhaust or backfire up through the carburetor.



Personally I would stop dumping fuel down the carb. You are hurting the rings in the piston bore and you are going to score the piston and bore walls if you continue.

In addition, at some point you are going to compress liquid fuel one or more of the cylinders and bend a connecting rod.

Last and not least, it is possible to put enough raw fuel in the engine that at some point it will explode, well out of time and can damage absolutely anything, like bending a valve, breaking a piston or a compression ring.

Whoever told you to do that, stop, all you are doing is hurting the engine.


There are people who will tell you, "don't listen to him, he's an idiot. I've been doing this for years and nothing bad has happened."

What they don't tell you is that they also fish by dropping dynamite in the water and just scoop up the fist, start their barbacue by dumping a gallon of gasolene on the coals, and shoot at the birds sitting on the high voltage power lines. Don't worry. It's all perfectly safe. Yea, ok Pal.

Thanks for the replies.

Pulling the distributor out is not a big problem. I did the math last night and it is more like 45 degrees out.

I think I'll go back to the basics and make sure the plug wires are on correctly and the distributor is timed correctly (I've just been assuming that was the case to this point).

I'm planning to spend some more time on it later this afternoon. Maybe I'll have something to good to report.

360/8=45 degrees. Your plugs are out of phase. Chances are someone pulled that distributor out at one point for an unknown reason and put it back in one tooth off of where it should be.

I'd look at that FIRST. That's an easy fix. You don't even need to remove the distributor. Just move the plugs in the cap.

you may be a Lucky Guy, just grabbing it for 1/2 the price with just a timing problem !

I thought checking the roll pin is as easy as cranking the engine with the distributor cap off and watching it spin no?

As you said go back to basics, check point gap, plug lead phase, TDC etc. before you go pulling distributors out. Start with the easy answer first!

And don't worry about pouring fuel down the carb and "hydraulicking" your engine. That only happens to panteradoug because he uses a 44 gallon drum of fuel to start his webers.

quote:

I thought checking the roll pin is as easy as cranking the engine with the distributor cap off and watching it spin no?

In my case, the timing was retarded. The roll pin had sheared, and it allowed the rotor to get out of positon. The remanants of the pin held things together for a while, until it finally let loose.

In my case, when the final failure occurred, I was driving the car, and it ran worse and worse, until it finally failed (luckily in my driveway). So it's not always an "all or nothing" problem.

I do agree with the other posts with regard to checking the easy / non-intrusive stuff first.

Rocky

quote:

Originally posted by PanteraWanabe:


And don't worry about pouring fuel down the carb and "hydraulicking" your engine. That only happens to panteradoug because he uses a 44 gallon drum of fuel to start his webers.

Not so. Pump them twice and they fire up.

Mr Hunter, be VERY sure the harmonic balencer timing mark hasn't slipped also. Old balencers routinely slip their outer rings as much as 180 degrees. Try to confirm that TDC is actually true on the balencer before you jump thru hoops trying to get the ignition set to a possibly erroneous mark.

Update-

Funny thing about Panteras, most of the work is done from the rear of the motor, which in my case caused me to have the banks reversed in my head. Once I got myself correctly oriented, I was able to confirm that the timing is correct and the plug wires are all routed correctly from the distributor to the cylinders.

Took apart some of the connections in the ignitions sytem and clean them. Also found that while the plug wires have been replaced, the wire from the coil to distributor cap looks to be original and the ends were badly corroded. Cleaned those up and confirmed good consistant spark.

She's alive. After some 5 years or so, 2127 is breathing again. Thanks to all for the input.

Did confirm the fuel pump is shot. Picking one of those up today. That and a couple other small fixes and hopefully she'll be on the road by the weekend for her first shakedown run.

Good Work!

Congrats!

Rocky

Good news, have fun driving your new baby and being watched by every passer by!

Over the hump now ! Congrats !...