HELP! TIMING IS WAY OFF!

[JEdi 240sx]

Hey all I’ve been searching for the past week on this damn timing problem I have. Haven’t found a real answer so here it goes… I’m a noo b here but have been lurking the boards for a while. I have an 89 240sx. I noticed my car pinging a while back and tried various things, thought it was bad gas, injector cleaner… finally went to a mechanic and said it was timing. So I bought a timing gun and checked it out. Turned out my timing is set at–5 degrees. How the f**k did that happen!?!?!?! I tried advancing it and the farthest I can get it is about 10 deg and that’s where it stops. The weird thing is that when I bought the car it wasn’t pinging and has gradually gotten worse. At this point I’m currently running at about 0 deg…and I know that cant be good for the car. it runs ok but it pings really bad…sounds like a spray can. I really need to get this taken care ASAP so someone please help! Can my timing automatically throw itself off? Any input would be great…

-Erm

[s13sr20chris]

your dist is driven by the oil pump shaft off the crankshaft. that means it cant be your timing chain. it also means that your oil pump shaft could be off a toothe. i could tell you in a million words how to retime the oil pump. it only takes like 30 min if you get it right the first time. however, most folks dont get it right the first time. even with a million words i think you would still have trouble with it. reccomendation...1)if you feel like trying to do the job buy a fsm and just do it. its not hard you just unbolt the oil pump and stick the shaft up in there the way the fsm say to. then you pop the dist back in and set the timing.2)take to nissan dealer and pay them one hour(like $90) to set it for you.

[JEdi 240sx]

hey thanks for the fast reply really appreciate it. I'm going to get on retiming the oil pump tomorrow. I'll be doing it myself so that way I can learn more about it. So what I'm basically doing is putting the oil pump a tooth or two adavanced? What I dont understand yet...you'll prolly explain it though is that why is it that my motor will ping the most when its at 10 deg? I'm assuming that when I try and time it at 18 deg that the pinging will only get worse...or am I wrong?

[s13sr20chris]

that would be a separate issue. i dont really know. hey, it occured to me that you may not be setting timing with the tps unplugged. be sure to unplug tps to put you in timing set mode.