on an 86 iroc 305tpi motor, new plugs, msd cap+rotor 8m wires. I believe my timing is off after I did the head gaskets. now around 2k to 4k rpms sounds like a mis fire, it hasn't been doing this up until recently. I know for sure it's off a least a tooth by the way it runs anyhow. could it be a premature detonation? I'll try getting a vid up soon of it

 

No such thing as 'off by a tooth' - either the timing's right, or it isn't. If it's not, get a timing light, and rotate the dist in the appropriate direction until it is.

If you can't physically rotate the dist to where it needs to be because of some obstruction - vac can, loom length, whatever, THEN you might need to pull it and index the rotor a tooth or two in the appropriate direction.

 

best way to describe it for me is it idles like normal then goes 'ka thunk' which leads mr to believe misfire. who knows, I'll get brand new plugs and wires and go from there. cars been a p.i.t.a lol

 

I recommend doing a cylinder leak down test....make sure the cylinders are sealed correctly first before messing with timing. You did just do head gaskets, so there is possibility of some type of issue in there. I'm curious, did you torque the heads randomly, or did you use the proper torque sequence?

 

i did that that correctly, after doing the gaskets, i did the plugs as well, drove it for about an hour from my garage back to my house. it did that fine, took all back roads to be sure since it was only the 2nd time driving it since i got it. well, it made it to my house, then the starter failed, installed a new one, which was bad of the shelf. just my luck.. finally got a good one, decided it was about time for msd cap/rotor. put those on ran excellent. then filled it up and put some injector cleaner in there because it still had a little bit of old gas in it. since then it started doing this what sounds to be a misfire coming from cylinder 5 or 7 if im not mistaken. its just the drivers side not to sure what cylinder it is exactly.

 

I'm leaning more toward an injector.

 

So dodgy starter aside, basically it ran fine until you filled it up and added injector cleaner? Maybe bad fuel or clogged filter?