Timing issue

[andysauto1]

I think You misunderstood the nature of the question, have You checked it before meant 'this engine/combo as is' before, i.e. were the marks where they belonged & now they're not. And I've worked on cars for over 4 1/2 decades, over 3 1/2 professionally, and I've accidently hooked the wrong one avoiding hot mannys/headers.
I can assure You Del means no disrespect either when asking these questions, He has gone out of His way & has helped a TON of Members here.
Hope to see pics of Your rectified timing marks...peace!!

You all had reasonable answers and I've learned a lot on this website. Sometimes I get frustrated. This car has been a battle from day one. I'm right at the finish line and then find this problem. Not as young as I use to be. Sometimes I feal like I'm running out of time. I do respect everybody's input here, all of it made sense one way or the other. Anyway thanks to all of you.

 

[Killer6]

You all had reasonable answers and I've learned a lot on this website. Sometimes I get frustrated. This car has been a battle from day one. I'm right at the finish line and then find this problem. Not as young as I use to be. Sometimes I feal like I'm running out of time. I do respect everybody's input here, all of it made sense one way or the other. Anyway thanks to all of you.

Lol, I get it, it didn't seem like too many at the time I acquired & kept taking on projects @30, then 40, then 50, now I'm about to tick the 10-spot over on the odometer again....& I'm still doing the same thing...

 

[Mopar Sam]

You all had reasonable answers and I've learned a lot on this website. Sometimes I get frustrated. This car has been a battle from day one. I'm right at the finish line and then find this problem. Not as young as I use to be. Sometimes I feal like I'm running out of time. I do respect everybody's input here, all of it made sense one way or the other. Anyway thanks to all of you.

Hey, if you ever need a hand, send me a PM. I am about 20 minutes from Flora, just into Wayne county.

 

[andysauto1]

Problem solved, distributor advance stuck full advance. Surpised that it ran as good as it did. I had a distributor that i bought from a member here last winter (halifaxhop) put it in, now a completely different car.

 

[67Dart273]

AND NOW YET ANOTHER annoying story from the old days. I SWEAR that this is true.

From 70-74 I was stationed at then NAS Miramar, San Diego, as a Navy eletronics tech, and maintained Ground Controlled Approach RADAR and TACAN. For much of that time I also had scored a part time job (paid) at the base auto hobby shop

One day an either Lt Jg or Lt. came in with a 60's Ford 352/390 they had tried to tune up at home, I don't know how far away. Limped it to the shop

Here is all that was wrong. I can NOT figure to this day how they got enough power out of it to get it to MOVE much less drive

They had replacedl just about everything ignition, including cap and wires

FIRST, they had run the wires in the correct firing order, except Fords turn CCW and they had run the wrong way around the cap

NEXT the vacuum advance was ruptured so no vacuum advance

After that, the mech advance was jammed because someone had previously dropped a screw down in, which had mangled the springs, bent the spring anchors, etc.

BUT LAST they had put the points in dry, (no lube) and had not properly gapped them, and they were "accidently" barely opening on some cylinders.

I remember this like it was last week. You HAD to be there!!

 

[cudamark]

When I had my shop back in the late '70's, I had a Jeep 6 cyl. come in for a tune up. He had bought the Jeep brand new and it had never had any parts replaced in it's 40k miles, except for the exhaust manifold. It had already been replace 4 times due to cracks! He'd had tune-ups naturally, and oil changes, but no major parts. He had had the dealer do all the work in the past, but, was never happy with the way it ran (gutless) and was willing to give me a try. I started the tune up by pulling the plugs and doing a compression test. The plugs were wiped! Just ice white and melted. No wonder he was going through manifolds. This thing must be running too lean or something to make it run that hot in the combustion chamber. The coolant temp was still in the middle range on the gauge, so it wasn't as though that was the cause. I double checked everything else and completed the tune up thinking maybe they had done something wrong on the previous tune-ups at the dealer. I finished up, took it for a test drive, and sure enough, this thing was a dog. No power even at full rev. I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what was the story here. Compression was excellent at 150psi across the board. I decided to recheck the timing and it was spot on. I revved the engine and the timing advanced like it should........whoa, wait a minute here. The timing was going the other way! Dang, I missed that the first time. Instead of it having spark advance, it was having spark retard. What the heck? Well, I figured it out. Seems Jeep used Delco distributors that year and used the same one as some GM 6 cylinder, EXCEPT the GM version turned the other way! Well, the Jeep factory either ordered the wrong distributor to install in this Jeep, or, whoever built that particular distributor installed the advance parts backwards (my guess). I flipped everything around, reinstalled the distributor, fired it up, set the timing, saw it now actually had vacuum advance, and took it for a drive. Wow, what a difference! This thing now ran GOOD! Customer was thrilled, I had a customer for life, and he never had to replace any more exhaust manifolds.