possible distributor problem ka24e auto?

[blues14]

i recently had a low km ka24e installed in my 89 240sx automatic.. the shop installed the motor using my old distributor, starter etc.... the car drove like crap. no power, sloppy shifting etc. well , the shop is now out of buisness so i cant take it back in, but i was tinkering with the distributor., if i rotate the distributor all the way clockwise, the car has plenty of kick and shifts a lot better, but not perfect. I bought the car from a chick at work for 500 bucks because she blew the headgasket and didnt want to deal with it. the cars got 129k miles and she said she NEVER had transmission problems. so what the heck could be wrong with the car....?

[onosqv]

Well, first off, please check your timing, by playing w/ the distributor randomly, you are totally f'ing up the performance of your car.

The car is probably acting like crap because your timing is totally out of whack. http://www.ka-t.org/basetiming.htm

That is for a DOHC, but the same idea applies to SOHC - you can also search for the sohc one, I only know the link above off hand.

After you set the timing correctly, you can check the compression of the car since you replaced the headgasket (edit: replaced engine) and make sure your car is to spec. You can also search for that.

Good luck.

[Touchdown038]

Is the distributor timing right on the "new" motor? Sounds like it is off a tooth or so.

Get a timing light and see if you can advance the timing 20 degrees. If you can't, then it is off. If you can, set it at 15 degrees (stock) and move on to something else.

[blues14]

my freind tried to check the timing with a gun, but said that the crank pulley has absolutely no visible markings on it. so we started by turning the distributor counter clockwise, and it got worse. then we turned it clockwise and it kept running better and better until we couldnt turn it any more. thats why i am thinking the distributer may be installed improperly. but if there truly no markings on the crank pulley, can it be properly timed?

[Touchdown038]

If you keep turning it further and further clockwise, you're advancing the timing more and more. Can you see the timing marks with it all the way advanced?

And yes, there are marks on the crank pulley. If you need to, turn off the motor and spin it by hand to see the marks. Or if there's oil or sludge on the pulley covering up the marks, wipe it off and search for them.

This really makes me think the distributor timing is off a tooth. Not a hard fix, but a somewhat annoying one.

[blues14]

cool, i will try cleaning it, I just hope the shop i bought the motor from didnt pressure wash the marks off.... are the marks engraved and then painted? maybe i should just have a shop re-install the distributor, cant be that much just for labor.

[Touchdown038]

Yeah they are engraved and painted on. They are really just notches in the pulley. Resetting the timing seriously isn't too hard of a job, it just can take a couple of tries to get right. You can't really screw anything up though, which is nice. Just pull the distributor, set the engine at TDC, pull the oil pump w/ shaft, turn the shaft so the dots match up, reinstall everything. Repeat if it isn't fixed (it's easy to spin the pump shaft very slightly while reinserting)