Need Help

duke96_old · July 16, 2007 at 6:51 PM

I have been in the process of restoring my K for the past

3 and a half years and i am now almost complete. I am having trouble getting it to start. I have plenty of fuel and tons of compression but im having trouble with getting spark. It seems that everytime i set my distributor that it ends up 180 degrees out after turning it over a few times. I have set it numorus times and the same result. I have even set it 180 out to see if it would jump to TDC but no such luck. Is my dizzy bad?? What else could it be?? the frustration is starting to set in. please help, all suggestions welcome. thanks again.

Duke

Edited by - SixT5HiPo on 07/17/2007 13:10:36

SHELB66_old · July 16, 2007 at 8:06 PM

Make sure that the rotor is pointing to #1 piston position on distributor cap at END of the COMPRESSION stroke (NOT exhaust stroke) and you are lined up with TDC. With the valve covers off, it is easy to tell where you are at because you can follow the movement of the valves.

Otherwise, you can take the #1 plug out and cover the whole with your finger. You should be able to feel the air being forced out when you are on the compression stroke. Check/adjust engine timing once you get the engine going. Good luck!

Craig

C6ZZKGT · July 17, 2007 at 5:09 AM Official Post

If you are truly losing the timing after a few times of trying to start it there is a strong possibility that you have sheared the roll pin that goes through the distributor gear and the shaft. It will look complete even when broken but the shaft will not turn with the gear all of the time. This could have been this way before you installed your distributor and it would not have been necessarilly obvious. It is usually caused by the oil pump seizing up due to foriegn particles like broken nylon capped camshaft sprockets getting wedged in the oil pump gears. That will usually twist the oil pump drive rod like a barber pole but can also break the distributor gear roll pin. This could have happened long before you owned the distributor.

-Fred-

duke96_old · July 17, 2007 at 12:30 PM

Thanks for the info so far, but unfortunatly these are all things

that i have thought of so far and it still seems to end up out of

sinc with the motor. please keep the info coming. If i have not figured this out soon im going all MSD dizzy, box, coil and then hopefully it will solve everything.

Duke

289kford · July 17, 2007 at 2:02 PM

You don't say if the motor has been apart or anything changed. is the cam original? if replaced, is the gear that meshes with the cam correct? is it the correct distributor and gear? if the dist gear is not loose, the only other thing I can think of besides the gears not meshing, is that the timing chain is wiped, but then you should not have compression either. do you have access to a 2nd dist?

kar-nut_old · July 17, 2007 at 4:13 PM

Have you comfirm you have a spark? If the timing event is off you should still have a spark, but the engine will not start.

duke96_old · July 18, 2007 at 12:39 PM

Ok i believe that i have figured it out. There is nothing

wrong with my dizzy i was unaware that it was a 2:1 ratio with the crank. So every other rotation of my crank would have it be 180 out.

However, I have sourced my spark problem to be coming from my ignition switch. Hopefully when i put a new switch in that it will solve all my starting headaches. I thank all of you for all the input to try and help me resolve the problem and i will keep you all posted.

Duke

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