HELP!!! Distributor drive gear question

[shadango]

i am trying to figure out why my 318 is running like crap.

I lined up the TDC mark on the balancer to the zero on the tab.
Looking thru the plug hole it appears that piston #1 is at the top....

The rotor tip is pointed in the general direction of the tower for wire #1, but it is just past it.....

I pulled the distributor thinking it may be off a tooth......and realized that this distributor is different from others I worked on and it uses an intermediate gear.....

is it possible the gear is off a tooth? Can that be adjusted (ie pull it and move it) ?  Or do I have other issues?

Or maybe the way my rotor is past the TDC is normal?

[71chally416]

Re-indexing the position of your gear to move where the rotor points will have zero effect on the way the car runs. It might put the vac canister in a better position or move the #1 plug to a different location on the cap but it will not make the engine run better as long as your timing is right.

If you timed the car as I described before, blocking the vac and holding the motor up to get the total at 36* on your dampner and it doesn't run the way you expect or it has misfires you probably have some other issue like maybe a bad plug wire or a vacume leak or even a internal engine problem.

[shadango]

Well, I am in a world of crap right now.

I was very careful to make sure that I put everything back the way it needed to be.....marks, etc....I marked the position of the base of the distributor to the engine, annd the position of the rotor to the distributor....so it went in just like it came out..........

Now, when I was pulling the (brand new Accell) spark plug wires/plugs  to find TDC(the engine was hot) two of them came apart....inside the boot....almost looked like they melted apart......I was pulling on the boot, not the wire....I have pulled thousands of plug wires over the years and this is the FIRST tme I have ever done this, let alone TWO.....

Anyways, I replaced those two with two from my old set, which the car ran with when I first got it running.

So, I start her up and she was running the same as she was before.  Poorly, but running....

She stalls out as she usually would when cold.....so I figure I would check the choke setting etc.....

From that point on it all went downhill....

The car started and then died.......if I wait a bit, seems like it at least wants to try.....

Thinking I screwed up something in the distributor area, I pulled the plugs again and made sure that at TDC on one of the strokes, the rotor lined up with the #1 wire...it does.

Now, I suppose I could be 180 out, but in that case it shouldn't run at all, right?

I have spark....and I have fuel.....

I was lucky enough to get her running long enough to get into the garage for the night.....and put the battery on the charger.

Yeah, I had set the total timing using your method and it still ran poorly.....thats why I was checking to make sure that the rotor tip was lining up with #1 tower at one of the TDC strokes.

I did do a compression check earlier today and the numbers were a little higher than when I did it cold the last time, and more consistent this time.  About 145-150 on all cylinders....

Letting it sit a minute or two or 10 seemed to help my chances some of starting....

Maybe there are more damaged plug wires...guess I can check that.....

Could it be that i jumped the timing chain or something? I was told when I bought the car that the timing chain had just been replaced 10-15k ago with a double roller.....Guess I have to pull the front end of the engine apart to check that right? No other way I suppose......

I did find a couple drops of oil dripping off of the coil....could thecoil be bad?  Its an accell super coil, brand new .......

Cant tell you what a failure I feel like right now.  
******************
8:11pm
As an update....let the car sit for a good hour.......Still no joy.....Backfire thru carb, and a new, nasty almost grinding noise occasionally.....

I fear the worst............

[Chryco Psycho]

Well I can tell you from experience that if the reluctor & rotor are not indexed properly it can run like crap & back fire etc ,so first there are 2 positions for the reluctor on the shaft ,one is for clockwise & one is for counterclockwise rotation , if the coil fires while the rotor is between terminals on the cap it will generallt take the easiest path to ground / the wrong wire to send the spark down & obviously will run poorly , the the top of the reluctor there is an arrow near one of the keyways , if it is in the wrong keyway for the rotation of the arrow you need to pry off the reluctor & use the other keyway . The other thing I have seen is a dist built from multiple different dist & the housing & pick up do not match causing a misalignment between the reluctor & rotor phasing .
this is where I would start looking for the problem
the coil if it is leaking oil will be a part of the problem
you could also have carbon tracking inside the cap if the rotor is not lining up with the terminals properly

[shadango]

Thanks Chryco....

I never pulled the reluctor or rotor off the shaft...I just had the distibutor out and was looking it over.....though this is something I will check. How do you know which keyway to use?  I saw the arrow on the top of the reluctir but didnt see anything on the shaft.....

Will have to get the meter out I guess and check the coil and ballast...

I am sure that I put the distributor back in with the rotor facing the right way but I may pull it anyways again and do a 180 on it .....

The cap and rotor are new.

Its not even running now, whereas before it was.....so i must have done something or something happened to change that.....

Found this link.......talking about the accell super coil and running a second ballast resister?
http://www.cuda-challenger.com/cc/index.php?topic=58437.msg602643#msg602643

I have a super coil and have just the 4 pronged ballast.....

[Chryco Psycho]

if it ran before it cannot be 180* out
 you do not want 2 ballasts between the power & the coil it will drop the voltage too low , you can replace the ballast with the one supplied with the coil the reluctor has an arrow on the top ner one keyway if the dist turns the opposite way use the opposite keyway
 I can phone you & talk you through this if it helps

[shadango]

So if it were 180* out from how I reinstalled the distributor, it wouldn't run at ALL, right?

The reluctor arrow was pointing in the clockwise direction as it shoudl...I never removed it from the shaft....

I did measure 1/16" that the rotor/shaft/reluctor could be moved up and down....side to side and rotational play is zero far as I can tell...just  little when I turn it clockwise and the springs move....

I checked the coil resitances this morning........its an accell super stock (chrome) coil....

side terminals is  about 1.4 - 1.5 ohms

side terminal to center terminal is 9,180 ohms

Now, according to the factory service manual, those numbers would be fine for a normal stock coil.

According to a diagram I saw online, resistance should be  .75-.81 ohms and  10k-11k ohms.....

Cant find good specs for the super coil but someone here posted in a thread that his super coil new was measuring .8 and 10k......

My coil is leaking oil out of the center......

And of course the 90 day warranty was up a week ago.

There is 11.9 volts at the brown wire when I check there (coil disconnected)

Ballast checks out at 1.2 ohms on the primary and 5.3 on the secondary.....pretty sure thats what the readings were when it was new...I remember seeing the factory specs of .5/.6 and posting about it that mine were this high.....returned the first ballast and every other ballast they had on the store measured the same....
I just checked TDC again....

The rotor is still ending up where it was before at TDC so I didn't skip or break a timing chain etc......thank God!

I guess I go and buy another coil, since this one is leaking anyways.....could the vibrations from my poorly running engine have killed it??  I was going to buy a stock style coil but dont want to kill another one.....the car only saw maybe 20-30 miles total plus time running in my driveway......

[71chally416]

So if it were 180* out from how I reinstalled the distributor, it wouldn't run at ALL, right?

That is correct. It would not run at all.

I'd check the resistance on all your plug wires if you say they are coming apart. I wonder if you overheated the plugs by running the timing wrong and it melted the wires
onto the plugs  I'd also check the distributor cap closely for carbon tracking or a crack. Check the rotor too. The reluctor gap should be .011" and should be checked with a non-magnetic brass feeler gage.

If you can get to run and idle again try the old school way of checking your ignition.
Pull each plug wire off and see if all of them cause the engine to miss or if one or two have no effect. If you have any that don't make the engine obviously miss when you pull the plugs remove them and see if they fire out of the motor when you ground them on the motor block.

[shadango]

Ok, here is where we are at.....

I went out and bought a reman distributor, complete with a new advance unit, pickup and reluctor.  Aside from the #1 location being off, it looked the same as mine.

Also had autozone check my control unit and it checked ok.

The coil was found to be ok, but was replaced by them since it was leaking.

The VR seems ok, as there is electrical path across the two terminals...that is all they checked (how do you check it really??)

now the story gets interesting......i found that one more plug wire had seperated that I hadnt caught....so I put all my old (MOPAR) wires back on.  Just like you said, I guess the wires melted!   How do I avoid that!?

I found that all of the old mopar wires had very low resistance....like in the 5 ohm or so range including the coil wire.

The accell wires have a VERY high reading...in the K-Ohm range!

Now why would that be?

Glad I only toasted a $15 set of wires (got them at a parts meet, brand new in box)

Anyways, put everything back together and it started up first turn.    Ran very smooth....at first.

Once it heated up some, it started to bog some off of idle......It seems to be missing much much less.

As I moved the timing up and down it really didnt seem todo much for the uneven/bumpy idle....so I have the initial timing set at around 10 right now and max timing is up around 28 or so....

I am afraid to run too high or too low.....

What do you think would have caused the wires to melt the way they did?  i never saw that happen before and I dont want to toast another set while trying to smooth out the idle and carb and such.....

Thanks for your help on this!  I am definately much better off than I was last night!  At least she runs!  LOL

Now, gotta get her running RIGHT! 

[71chally416]

I seem to recall you were running it with like 40* lead at idle. That could definately super heat the plugs and melt the wires.

[shadango]

Yeah, but that was BEFORE I started doing anything....I didnt have the issues until yesterday, when I had already knocked the idle timing down.....36* max at 3k rpm and it was at about 18* at idle....

I dont know if all the testing/idling maybe did it?

Makes me nervous now....but at least I will know what to look for next time...LOL