4ac timing

[sonsta]

Driving along yesterday al of a sudden my engine died, but the fuel light had been on for a while so i thought i was out of fuel, rolled to the bottom of the hill i was driving up into a mates garage and put 5 ltrs of fuel in it and went to take off and it wouldnt start.
Popped the bonnet to find my entire dizzy had fallen out, dropped oil everywhere and of course has now fucked with the timing.

Put it back in with the aid of a couple of zip ties and drove home then i got home found a bolt put it in and now it wont start. i can tell its just the timing is out but i just need to know how you know the dizzy gears are in the right spot? is there some kind of marker on there?

[Jonny Rochester]

Attention to EVERYONE on this forum.

Buy a book on car mechanics. Read it. Come back to car model specific forums once you are familiar with cars in general.

[sonsta]

lol yeh i dont have a 4ac book, anyone know where i can download one?

[Konakid]

buy a gregorys workshop manual form your local repco, 35 bucks or something.

[sonsta]

hm yeh but im not gonna be able to get to anywhere that sells them till i have a car that goes and to make my car go i need to know how to get the timing right.

ok well this would be my guess on how to do it.....

obviously you would start by getting the engine to TDC?
then would you be able to just line the rotor button up so that its lined up with the number1 spark lead in the rotor cap.

i think i should replace the points before i go doing anything also, odl points wouldnt be helping the situation

[Sprinter86]

get a ae82 electronic dizzy while ure at it. bolt in upgrade.

Saves you having to buy/adjust points all the time.

as you have sed, put it on TDC (make sure no.1 cylinder has just completed compression stroke and not exaust stroke obviously) and then borrow ure mates timing light and go nuts. 4ac is the most simple of engines.

[ke70dave]

the only way to DIY stuff on your car is to learn what the part is is doin, learn how making alterations will affect things, then get stuck into it.

asking basic questions on an internet forum isnt the way to learn!

agreed with jonny buy the book, read it from cover to cover...twice. then come back with specific questions.

btw sounds like your either one tooth to far advance or one tooth retarted. if it started when its hot but wont start now its prolly retarded. if its too advanced it will struggle to kick over.

forget about the points, if it fired before it will fire again. get a timing light also then you can tell for sure what its doing!!!! you can even turn the engine over by hand and see where the ignitition timing is set (with the light) saves on battery power by random cranking.

also watch when you line up the the rotor when you push the dizzy in it will tend to turn the rotor a bit (cause of the helical gears on the cam/dizzy). so you will have to stuff around with it making sure that once its in all the way its pointing at the right place. also if the engine is 180 degrees out, it will look like everything is correct (timing marks) but you wont get a note out of it.

guess and check is not a good method for ignition timing. (ive been through that before)

[Jonny Rochester]

I didn't say 4AC book. I said general car mechanics book. The process of setting up your dizzy is going to be the same as almost every car pre 1990.

[Golberg]

A lot could be learnt by reading the 4AGE book, and there is one of them floating around on the internet.

Never the less, as you said, oil went everywhere, have a look under the dizzy cap and make sure its clean and there is no oil in there too.

[sonsta]

yep cleaned inside the cap already, ill have a bit more of a play with it today and see how i go