hoop46
03-07-2022, 10:02 AM
First off, This is my first time messing with installing a distributor. I'm pretty mechanical but this is new.
Background: My boat blew it's transmission late in the summer of 2020. With it being late in the year, and with my wife being pregnant, we opted to put it up for the year. Summer of '21 after baby was born, I was able to rebuild the transmission in my free time (whatever that is). Around July, I was able to take the boat to the lake. Engine ran pretty bad and eventually shut down and would not restart. Transmission ran fine for that mile or so. I opted to rebuild the carb and go ahead and change out the distributor. The old distributor was full of corrosion and looked like it snowed inside. Probably the main issue here.
I installed my DUI on my 84 comp in the fall. Ran out of time, didn't get to try to start it afterwards so I just closed it up for the winter. Boat life with a 7 month old baby is fun. Over the winter, I've been getting pressure from upper management to get the boat working for the season and took this weekend to work on that. Pulled the boat back out and got to work Saturday. Since I wasn't confident in my previous work, I started from "scratch". Pulled #1 plug, turned engine until pressure started pushing my finger out, and then adjusted to 12 degrees BTC on the harmonic balancer as shown on the DUI paperwork. After, I installed distributor cap with the rotor pointing towards my #1 wire while engine was at this point.
I was able to get the engine to run. It ran well, but the timing light was showing a number 13 on the harmonic balancer which is not near the actual timing marks The idle was a little higher than normal too at 1100 RPM. At this point, I gave up for that day.
My worry is that this is a combo of carburetion and timing which makes things complex. I'm about 30% confident in my carb rebuild skills. I'm thinking it may be worth my $750 to eliminate that out of the question, because if I can't figure this out and take it to the shop, it'll end up being that anyways.
Did I do something wrong in the distributor process? Surely if it was that off the engine wouldn't run and would backfire? It ran pretty smooth.
Any ideas would be great.
Background: My boat blew it's transmission late in the summer of 2020. With it being late in the year, and with my wife being pregnant, we opted to put it up for the year. Summer of '21 after baby was born, I was able to rebuild the transmission in my free time (whatever that is). Around July, I was able to take the boat to the lake. Engine ran pretty bad and eventually shut down and would not restart. Transmission ran fine for that mile or so. I opted to rebuild the carb and go ahead and change out the distributor. The old distributor was full of corrosion and looked like it snowed inside. Probably the main issue here.
I installed my DUI on my 84 comp in the fall. Ran out of time, didn't get to try to start it afterwards so I just closed it up for the winter. Boat life with a 7 month old baby is fun. Over the winter, I've been getting pressure from upper management to get the boat working for the season and took this weekend to work on that. Pulled the boat back out and got to work Saturday. Since I wasn't confident in my previous work, I started from "scratch". Pulled #1 plug, turned engine until pressure started pushing my finger out, and then adjusted to 12 degrees BTC on the harmonic balancer as shown on the DUI paperwork. After, I installed distributor cap with the rotor pointing towards my #1 wire while engine was at this point.
I was able to get the engine to run. It ran well, but the timing light was showing a number 13 on the harmonic balancer which is not near the actual timing marks The idle was a little higher than normal too at 1100 RPM. At this point, I gave up for that day.
My worry is that this is a combo of carburetion and timing which makes things complex. I'm about 30% confident in my carb rebuild skills. I'm thinking it may be worth my $750 to eliminate that out of the question, because if I can't figure this out and take it to the shop, it'll end up being that anyways.
Did I do something wrong in the distributor process? Surely if it was that off the engine wouldn't run and would backfire? It ran pretty smooth.
Any ideas would be great.