A friend just bought a 1985 TPI car in great shape. The car came with long tubes and exhaust and has a few small mods done, lots of potential there. The timing however was so lazy that the car would chug until around 2500 then take off a bit. I brought it out tonight and tried setting the timing. I found out that the 85's are supposed to have a 4 terminal connector going to the distributor so I unplugged this and the car won't start at all (no spark). I set the timing with it connected and it ran good but the car seems to have caught up and pulled timing again. How the heck do you set the timing on these 85's?

 

Need to unhook the "timing set connector" on the tan/black wire near the back of the passenger side valve cover. The four wire connector unhook deal is for carb'd cars. Look on the emissions label for timing info other than that. And have the engine idling as slow as you can, engine up to operating temp etc.

 

So it's near the back of the passenger side valve cover and IS tan and black. Thanks for the heads up on this, I'll go search long and hard for this wire. I was all through that engine bay trying to locate it and couldn't. It's highly likely it's sitting behind the distributor or something.

 

It is sticking out of the wire loom over the heater box. The reason it wouldnt start with the 4-pin connector unplugged is that the ECM lost the rpm signal.