1. You may be at the wrong top dead center. The piston comes up to the top for both exhaust and compression. You want compression top dead center. Remove the sparkplug in the number one cylinder and cover opening with your hand. You will feel pressure building up when piston comes up for compression stroke. The screwdriver resting on piston head trick does not tell you if it is compression or exhaust stroke. (normally , if you are not far off in timing, you can tell compression top dead center because rotor will point close to cylinder one on distributor. if it point close to cylinder #4 it is most likely on the exhaust stroke)2. You may have flooded your engine. (happend quite easily) If you run engine for long when your distributor is on wrong tooth, you will flood car. It will run very weak . Turn car off quickly in this case. Have someone swivel the distributor to make sure the entire tooth is no good and then quickly turn off engine. If you flood car, pull out the egi and egi pump relays and turn engine over to get rid of gas or if it is badly flooded remove sparkplugs and let gas evaporate. Compressing liquid gas will damage pistons etc.
3. You are on the wrong tooth. Your car should run reasonably well if you are on the right tooth. The teeth represent about half an inch on the distributor where the rotor is.
4. All that starting weakened your battery.
5. something changed ie chain jumped a tooth.
6. Cap , rotor, or distributor damaged when you took it out.
7. Distributor wires in wrong order.
Things to know
When you push the distributor in, the rotor rotates about half an inch clockwise and when you pull rotor out it rotates about half an inch counter clockwise. This automatic rotation is because the gears are at an angle. The rotation is consistent so if you dont rotate the distributor while it is out(and dont rotate crankshaft) the distributor will go back into its exact original position. So, when you pull a dist. make sure you mark both positions of rotor on dist. housing when at top dead center.
Mark both these rotor positions on dist housing as you need both reference points to know where you are at. With the distributor out, rotate the distibutor a little bit towards where you think top dead center is to catch the next tooth. You rotate from the rotor mark you made when distributor was out. If this tooth doesnt work(engine does not run), pull out the distributor again and make new marks. this time rotate two teeth over in the other direction to catch the tooth on the other side. If this is confusing , always return to top dead center so you can keep better track of where you are at as you look for right tooth.
Once you are on the right tooth, your car should run pretty well. You then have to swivel the distributor while car is running to get to best position on tooth. You refine this more by using a timing light.
This picture shows how you refine adjustment once you are on the right tooth by swivelling distributor. The distance you can swivel or move along slot represents tooth width.
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12. if you are here, that means it's not starting. it wants to start more as you turn the distributor more one way. but you ran out of adjustment room! this means you are are tooth or two off. if you ran out of room turning the distributor right, you need to take out the distributor, rotate it over one tooth to the left, and reinstall. try again. likewise, if you ran out of room turning the distributor left, you need to take out the distributor, rotate it over onen tooth to the right, and reinstall. continue until the car starts.
Modified by vancouverbc at 3:27 AM 8/6/2008
Modified by vancouverbc at 2:33 AM 8/7/2008
1989-1998 240sx TUTORIALS
Factory service manuals 3
Factory service manuals BEST
Factory service manual2
Factory service manual 1989
Old FAQ
INSTALLS
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