Hi Ho!!!!
Man, it's been a long time since I've posted anything. I guess I know
why they call this work now... :-)
Before I get into the puzzle, I thought I'd post just how *#&$@ cold
it was this morning. It was about 10 degrees when I started the TR.
This was not a problem, it fired right up with vengeance! (read:
choke on max) So now, I slowly let the clutch out with the trans in
neutral and cough, ack, barf, die! The (#*$@ trans fluid was so thick
it stalled the engine! Ok, restart, give her some gas, and let the
clutch out, well we drop about 500 rpms, but it's running... Scrape
the windows, wrap the scarf one more time and have some serious fun
driving into work as the roads have a thin layer of snow. Wahoo!
Here's the puzzle... My car has always had a rough idle. The reason
for this is that it's not firing on all 6 at idle. It's erratic, and
the problem goes away on the road. It runs great on the road... My
distributor shaft has a bit of a wobble in it, so I figured that the
points didn't have the opportunity to open all the time. This must be
the source of my bad idle right!?!? Humm... I decided to replace the
points with the electronic ignition system... A few weeks ago,
Lawrence Buja and I installed the sucker on the TR. I removed all the
plugs and set the engine at 4degrees past TDC to set the timing with
the new module. That went easy, and upon starting the car, it settled
on an idle at 500 rpms, and ran smoother than I've ever heard it run.
It was great! It was awesome! It was a miracle!
Now, I decide to attack the starter which has been giving me some
problems... I remove the starter, clean things up, put it back and
nothing. No power to the starter. Lawrence and I debug that problem
to be a bad copper contact on the starter, fix that replace, and
restart the car. It now runs like it always has!?!?! Not the smooth
idle I had for that brief time. I was crushed... :-( So what's going
on here? What's the problem? Could this be a timing problem? When I
reassembled the engine, (several years ago now) I'm not sure I had the
cam exactly in time with the low end. BUT, I used exact marks and
think I got it right. However, this is a new grind on the cam, A
chambers BL2 grind (similar to the PI cam) so things are a bit
different now.
I'm guessing I have a timing problem. My next step is to remove the
plugs, find TDC by watching the number one piston come up (using a
screw driver through the sparkplug hole) and see if the timing marks
are correct. The valves should be in their right positions, me hopes.
Anyone got tips on how to do this? Any good fixes other than pulling
the timing cover if this is my problem? Any other ideas on why the
car ran so GREAT for 5 minutes once?
Cheers!
-Scotty
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