Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.28] on Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 15:03:47 :
I know I've been begging for help on this slant 6 trolley enough, but will some slant 6 expert indulge me one more time. I'm afraid I have the timing all confused. I replaced the timing set, setting the punch marks on the sprockets adjacent to each other before taking the old gears off, and being careful not to move anything. I'm putting it back together and I noticed that in that position, the distributor rotor points approximately to the #2 plug.
That didn't seem right, so I got #1 up on the compression stroke, as determined by sticking a wire down the #1 spark plug hole and turning the crank by hand until the piston was at TDC, and feeling the #1 valves through the oil filler cap (thanks, Dodge engineers!) to make sure both rockers were loose (valves closed). At that point, the rotor points at (or near) the #1 plug wire, so all seems good.
Here's where the problem comes. When I set it up like that, the punch marks on the timing chain sprockets are opposite each other. Both point to the left and up slightly, say 9:30 O'clock. When I put the timing cover in place and slip the damper pulley on, the timing mark is pretty close, maybe 3 deg retard, which is within the margin of error of my feeling TDC with the wire.
Is it possible the cam is 180 deg out of time? Would the engine still run like that? It has "driveability" issues, but could it even run with the cam off like that? It was "rebuilt" before I got involved, maybe 15 years ago, and I've found other indications that it wasn't a very good rebuild, but this seems extreme. How are the punch marks on the timing gears supposed to be when #1 is at TDC?
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