Hung Like a Stang

A few weeks ago my timing was off the charts, so we figured my distributor was off a tooth or two. well, I beleive it was, but when we put the rotor back in to place w/ the distributor down, we had it at 0 degrees on the balance, at top dead center on number one cylinder.

So I was tinking, since stock timing is supposed to be at 10 degrees, when the rotor was in place, should the balance be at 10 degrees?

anthonydalrymple

Your rotor should point to the #1 terminal of the car at TDC. I believe, (it's been awhile now), that if you have the dist. locked down at 10BTDC & bring the piston up to TDC; then the rotor should point just before(to the right) of #1 terminal.

Hung Like a Stang

okay, so basically, when #1 cylinder is at TDC, the balance should be at 10 degrees, adn the rotor should be coming around to hit #1 plug?

frop

Yes, it could be that your balancer has spun and you need a new one, or it's just off. Set TDC in #1 cyl & see what the balancer reads.

anthonydalrymple

Yup; agree with frop....

frop? what... ah never mind....

I had one balancer that had me 'hood winked' for a week or two. The darn ring would move while the car was running, giving me errant\erratic timing readings at the track. But here's the kicker.... I'd turn the ignition off so I could manually check TDC on the balancer with the piston via the #1 plug & the inertia of the engine abruptly stopping "threw" the outer ring back into the correct position! Quite a few choice words came outta my mouth when I figured that one out & in the process of tossing the balancer across the garage floor(& then some).

Hung Like a Stang

wait, what? can you elaborate upon that one for me?

anthonydalrymple

Balancer: outer ring w\timing marks, elastomer ring, inner hub bolted to crank. One of three bad balancers I've run into over the years "spun" upon firing up the motor & snapped back to the correct location upon turning off the motor. Yes, most outer failures move & catch in a permanent location for you to obviously see what happened via manual TDC check. Other times; the outer ring slips off in a manor you can see very easily while the car is idling(it wobbles). Then you get an odd ball one like i had that slips back & forth.....