Hello,
It seems I have a 4 cylinder without wanting one! I have 2.8 MPFI car, and it seems that Cylinders 1 and 4 arent firing. I have just rebuilt the engone from the manifold up. Put in a new ignition coil and took apart the distrubitor. But when I take the plug wire off of cylinder 1 and 4 , there isnt a noticable difference in the engine. When I pull the plug wires off any other cylinder I notice a difference. Any ides on how I can get it back to being a V6?
Thanks,
mr_han_solo

 

I changed plug wirs around and plugs also, and I still have the problem. One thing I am thinking is that when I took the distributor apart, I might have bent one of the points on the Pole Piece backwards, does ayone know the distance between the pole piece and the shaft points?

 

You would break the pole piece before you bent it. What are you using for a firing order?

 

2 1

4 3

6 5

Is that what you mean? I got it out of my Chiltons Manual.

 

No, that's cylinder position. Like a V8 chevy would be 18436572

 

Ah, ok
123456 thats the order

 

That's the right order.... Put a vacuum gage on the engine and see if it's bouncing around.

 

Well,
I wont have th time to try that tonight, so is it is what do I do, and if It isnot what do I need to do next?

 

First off, switch positions of 1 and 4 cylinders, to see if by swapping them out you find the problem. Otherwise you need to check what is the sparkplug wires position in the distributor....if you see the engine from the front bumper the first sparkplug wire in the distributor is located at 8 or 7 in an analog clock (in my case).

 

I was using the chiltons manual for the spark plug wires. At 7 or 8 in chiltons is 5. 1 Is at 12, oclock, then 2 is at 10, then 3 at 20, then 4 at 36 and so on. So, how is yours?, I could try it and see if it works better.

*EDIT* I do beleive out setup is the same, because in the chiltons manual, you look from the bacl of the engine. And you said looking from the front bumper, so I think we have the same thing.

 

Ok...I got this info from autozone....in my case the first cylinder is where in the pic the #2 position is located at.....
If you said that the other cylinders are working fine, try to switch the wires from 4 to 1 and 1 to 4....

 

Of course, after a few owners and a few mechanics, don't trust a diagram to show you where your #1 post is on your distributor. My #1 faces the firewall. It makes no difference to the engine; the only critical detail is how the cam gear meets the dist gear.

SO- find TDC of #1 (front passenger side cylinder) at the compression stroke. Wait till the motor cools down. Pull the #1 plug and pull the ignition coil-to-cap wire. Stuff a cotton rag into the #1 plug hole. (Don't use a paper towel, it'll shred) Turn the crankshaft pulley CLOCKWISE with a breaker bar and socket. When you find the compression stroke of #1, the rag will blow out. Then stick a phillips head screwdriver straight into the spark plug hole until you touch the top of the piston.

Continue turning the crank pulley clockwise until the screwdriver stops raising up. That's TDC compression.

Now look at your balancer. (The crank pulley is bolted to this.) The mark on the balancer should line up with the 0 degree mark on the timing scale. (Timing scale is on the driver's side of the crank pulley, bolted to the motor.) If it doesn't line up with 0, you need to get a new balancer.

Now remove the distributor cap while keeping the wires attached to the cap. Find where the rotor points to. Line this up with your eyes with your distributor cap. The distributor post "counterclockwise" to the rotor's point is your #1 cap terminal.

Sounds like a lotta work, huh? Well that's because I over-typed it. Then you'll know for SURE where your #1 is instead of guessing at it.

Once you know your real #1 on the cap, clockwise around the cap would be #2, then 3-4-5-6.

And remember that your #1 engine cylinder is the frontmost passenger side one. On V8's, that cylinder is #2- but we've got the V6's.

 

I shot a timing light on it and it is in perfect timing, so do I still need to check the TDC?

 

Glad to hear you checked timing!! Not many people here have done that.

If you want to be sure of where your #1 cap terminal is, then yes, you need to find TDC of #1 for compression stroke.

And you should still check your balancer after you find TDC of #1. Your timing light won't tell you if the balancer's outer ring has slipped and the timing mark has moved.