I have set the number one piston all the way up, then put the pillar for number one piston on the dizzy cap right ontop of the rotor, hooked all the wires up in the correct order. now I went and tried to start it and it kicked back on the starter and sounded really bad like it was dieing. is there something else i have to do ?

 

did you make sure down on the crank it was at tdc when the piston was at the top?

 

did you point the rotor at the correct cylinder when you installed the dizzy? Its gotta be TDC on the Balancer dizzy installed with the rotor pointing at the correct cylinder. which should be if your standing in front of the car looking at it the cylinder to your right closet to the radiator.

 

no, did not know you had to do that :/ hope i didnt mess anything up. how can you tell its tdc when number one is at the top ? the timing light mark ? the rotor on the dizzy was pointed at 3 o clock looking at the front of the engine bay. then i set one off of that when cylinder one was all the way up.

my first time setting timing on a 350.

 

what 350 is this? carb tbi tpi? on the bottom on the harmonic balancer is a mark . its a groove about half an inch long into the solid metal wheel. there should be another small piece of metal at the top that has some tick marks at like -2, 0, 2, 4, 6 or something like that you put the line on the balancer to the zero. and then make sure the piston is at the top. Then you set your dizzy in a way so that the rotor is pointing to your first cylinder. if its efi with a dizzy and separate coil when you time it with a gun after you do this there is dizzy disconnect where on one of the wires coming from the distributor you can separate it. Time it with a gun then reconnect the wire.

 

its a carbed 350, out of a late 70's camaro. hold on will take a pic of the harmonic balancer so you can see what i'm talking about.

 

since its a carb scrap what I just said about the disconnect it should be pretty straight forward. line up the lines pop in the distributor and point it at the right cylinder and check it with your gun. Then you just make small adjustments right or left with the distributor itself to get it where you want it.

 

alright here it is...



could i have messed anything up starting it with the wrong timing ? i only bumped the key for a second or two and noticed something was wrong and stopped.

 

alright, thanks for your help man ! I will go try that and tell ya how it goes

 

I doubt it. your probably good. I put a fuel injected one in a landcruiser and the fuel lines were messed up but I thought it was a timing issue and had it set all over the place and it was fine when i was done. Look for a line on that balancer to line up at zero on that plate with the numbers. it should be on the outer circle somwhere.

 

make sure that the degrees on the timing cover is on the exact same spot as the older cover because I see that youve got a new timing marker (looks nice) but if the 0 degrees is not where the factory one is at (position wise) then youre degree marker wont be at its original place. To verify if its on its right position, youll have to do a compression test. Have some one go under the car and turn the flywheel while the car is in nuetral (set parking brak). remove the spark plug at #1 cylinder and while the other turns the fly wheel, you should feel pressure as the #1 piston moves up in its compression stroke. Once it has stopped (compression or pressure on finger, then you would be at '"cylinder#1 TDC". Then check where the timing mark is at on the harmonic balancer. If the marker on the cover (chrome piece) is positioned correctly, then the line on the harmonic balancer should be at 0 degrees according to the chrome degree marker if it is in its correct position. Make sense?

 

ah, well i did that the first time, i just stuck my finger in it untill its stopped blowing, then took a piece of soft metal and cranked it while felling the piston. i didn't look at the harmonic balancer at the time though. thats when i made this post

but i had it running for a few seconds, while messing with the dizzy cap ajusting timing to see if i could get it to run longer. but now if i go 10* foward or back in timing it runs for a second or two, then flames come out my carb thats not good i suppose. what would cause that ?

 

wher are you? If you're around Morris//Ottawa//LaSalle-Peru//Streator//Pontiac Illinois are I could run by & give you a hand.

 

I'm in Pensacola, FL long drive. I got it going though ! Spark plug wires needed to be rotated once around the dizzy. it was sounding like those kikker bobber motorcycles until i did that.

Just won't idle now, but its the same carb from the truck and i had the same prob. carb is about due for a rebuild.

Thanks for your help guys really appreciate it ! hope to return the favor sometime.