Calling Austin Cruisers - New FJ40 owner looking for help (1 Viewer)

[77mustard40]

The gear on the distributor engages with the cam gear to turn the distributor, but the bottom of the shaft is slotted like a flat-blade screw driver. This sits in a grove that engages the oil pump gear. If the shaft is not fully seated into the clamp you can get the motor to run without generating oil pressure resulting in catastrophic failure. Take a small mirror or feel under the base of the dizzy to make sure it went all the way down. If you can see or feel the shaft of the distributor above the clamp then better to pull and re-install. You can use a flashlight with the dizzy removed to see the orientation of the slot and to turn it so that the seated shaft will slide into place (remember that the gear will rotate as it engages the cam gear so you have to adjust for that)

Here is a pretty good thread on the subject

Distributor install

I received a new distributor from Mark's Offroad, and I cannot seem to get it to fit properly. I have searched, and it seems that I need to make sure the shaft end goes into the oil pump. I did this by rotating the rotor, but am not sure if its seated properly. My old dizzy was an HEI if that...

forum.ih8mud.com

 

[Perkalater]

The gear on the distributor engages with the cam gear to turn the distributor, but the bottom of the shaft is slotted like a flat-blade screw driver. This sits in a grove that engages the oil pump gear. If the shaft is not fully seated into the clamp you can get the motor to run without generating oil pressure resulting in catastrophic failure. Take a small mirror or feel under the base of the dizzy to make sure it went all the way down. If you can see or feel the shaft of the distributor above the clamp then better to pull and re-install. You can use a flashlight with the dizzy removed to see the orientation of the slot and to turn it so that the seated shaft will slide into place (remember that the gear will rotate as it engages the cam gear so you have to adjust for that)

Here is a pretty good thread on the subject

Distributor install

I received a new distributor from Mark's Offroad, and I cannot seem to get it to fit properly. I have searched, and it seems that I need to make sure the shaft end goes into the oil pump. I did this by rotating the rotor, but am not sure if its seated properly. My old dizzy was an HEI if that...

forum.ih8mud.com

Excellent... Thanks! Here's what I did - I think I got it right.

I manually turned the harmonic balancer (in the proper rotation of the engine) until the BB on the fly wheel was pointed at the needle marking the timing. I to top dead center on the compression stroke and the oil pump slot was pointed to spark #4.

I then inserted the distributor in the engine. It took a little wiggle for it to slip all the way down into place. I'm nearly certain the distributor housing is flush against the motor. This would indicate the flat-head of the shaft is down inside the oil pump slot RIGHT??? From there, I rotated the distributor cap slightly to get the engine to idle better. It's still slightly off, or the carb needs tweaking after getting it down from Denver elevation.

If the distributor housing is flush against the motor, is there anything else to check?

My gauges are on and off.. Oil pressure... fuel... temp... they used to work, but don't any more. That's next on my list to troubleshot.

And yes -- I'm also dropping the oil pan and changing the gasket and the oil soon, and fishing out any metal parts that might have sheered off. I'm expectation at this point is that they are in the bottom of the pan, or on the magnetic filter inside. #fingerscrossed !

 

[Perkalater]

Ok... So it ran great for 2-3 days. I had some very minor back firing at low RPM when I tried to accelerate, and it caused some sputtering until it revved up a bit, and once revved, it would run well. I figured the timing was OFF just a tad still, and maybe the carb needed some adjustment.

Yesterday, afternoon, it started backfiring a lot more. I lost the ability to accelerate altogether and it just died.

I was talking to AJ, and he things it's a timing issue. He also suggested a spark plug problem. I'll change the plugs. That's easy enough.

Regarding the timing, once thing I found is that my distributor cap seems to be in a different position than before and it's causing spark plug wire #6 to be a little too short. I can't seem to get turn the distributor any more to get the timing adjusted. Do I need to rotate the cap 90* and then turn the distributor... with that allow me to reposition the spark plug posts so the wires fit like they used to, or is this further evidence that I didn't get the timing dialed in like I thought. It ran OK for 150 miles, then suddenly won't start any more. It was a bit warmer yesterday... maybe that effected how it ran.