Thread: MIsfiring ,too rich mixture, Need help

The crank turns clockwise. The right hand side of the TDC mark on the pulley arrives at TDC before the tdc mark. Ergo 6 BTDC is on the right hand side of tdc when viewed by timing light, ie 1 min past 12 as you say. As PhilipA says, you need to align the oil pump to get the dissy in the right spot. Pulling the vac advance off is not doing it right.

I suggest you advertise a BBQ at your place one weekend. BYO spare dissy! AULRO members will travel some distance to assist a fellow sufferer.

Have you also double checked that you have your firing order right with your leads?
1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2

I pulled the vacuum advance off as this allows for an easy adjustment of the timing to test if this is where the problem lay. I have farted about with the lining up of the oil pump drive numerous times and had the same result. I note that I have about about 4mm vertical play in the distributor drive shaft not sure if thats an issue or not. All plugs were black and wet again so have cleaned them up again and car seems to want to start but doesnt get there.
Sequence of leads is right.
The BBQ may be the way to go but still looking for a working dissy to trial.
What's involved in changing to the later distributor that has the 3 wire plug and amp on the side. Saw new on ebay for $165 (including amp, vac advance ,cap and rotor complete.

Originally Posted by PeterAllen

I pulled the vacuum advance off as this allows for an easy adjustment of the timing to test if this is where the problem lay. I have farted about with the lining up of the oil pump drive numerous times and had the same result. I note that I have about about 4mm vertical play in the distributor drive shaft not sure if thats an issue or not. All plugs were black and wet again so have cleaned them up again and car seems to want to start but doesnt get there.
Sequence of leads is right.
The BBQ may be the way to go but still looking for a working dissy to trial.
What's involved in changing to the later distributor that has the 3 wire plug and amp on the side. Saw new on ebay for $165 (including amp, vac advance ,cap and rotor complete.

Pulling off the advance capsule allows you to miss the timing point with the rotor button completely. It is not a good method to adjust timing on the fly. That is why you correlate the alignment of the star rotor with the rotor button viz. lead position. Moving the vac advance within its set limits will move the rotor button sideways compared to the dissy cap lead position. Moving it further is a waste of time. All that happens is you get no spark to the lead.

The amp comes off with 2 small screws. A suitable connector should be easy to obtain from a wrecker or forum member wrecking a D1 in his back yard. Otherwise pm me and I can send you a Bosch amp conversion to suit your distributor. Or send me your distributor so I can test a Bosch conversion on it directly, and replace bits as necessary. A dissy contains separate electrical parts, each is replaceable separately. I have a spare dissy in my workshop on which the advance has died, which I use for testing conversions. Personally I wouldn't trust your Lucas amp to produce a reliable spark. If you have the timing set correctly, there is a spark of sorts, chances are its simply too small to start a glugged up engine.

Oh, and if your starter motor is too slow, it won't start in a month of Sundays. I am just throwing out the starter in the ute as it has been very reluctant to start lately. After running for 1/2 hour it wouldn't start at all. New/second hand Bosch starter coming up.

Thanks Bee Utey, starter motor is good , battery is the limiting factor I have as have only a weak charger so only get four or five test starts before I have to pull the battery and charge again. Will pull out the dissy again and put back the vacuum advance and see if it fires up.

Reinstalled the vacuum advance, set to TDC, checked everything and cranked it over to get a massive backfire. God knows what damage that may have done. altered position of dissy a few times and no joy other than a few lesser backfire explosions. Seriously considering filling it with soil and making a planter box out of it.
Just to recheck the leads, No 1 lead is the first post anticlockwise of the front distributor cap clip right and No 8 being on the other side of the clip.
I am sure thats right but now doubting everything.

Sounds like the crankshaft is 1 turn out from TDC. Set the crank timing mark to where you think no.1 is and remove the no.1 plug. Use a piece of rubber hose to blow down the plug hole and see if there's compression. If you can just blow in the valves are open and you need to either turn the engine 1 turn or the dissy 1/2 turn.

Where the leads are placed doesn't matter so long as no.1 is lined up at no.1 TDC and the others follow clockwise in the firing order, ie 18436572