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2.8 Timing & Distributor Questions


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3 minutes ago, AMC86Kid said:

kool beans now i got to see if i can learn about the dial on the light gun 

 

Good luck. I pulled up the manual for that gun from the Harbor Fright web site. As usual, it was totally useless. Didn't make any mention of a dial feature.

 

Try YooToob.

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1 hour ago, AMC86Kid said:

 

can you explain how you think it works?

 

 

I have no idea.

 

Finding TDC was not a wasted effort, though. You still need to find TDC and mark it on the damper (it's already marked, of course) and on the block. Your photo shows TDC lining up pretty nicely with a bolt, but I'd go a bit farther and put some bright yellow paint on that bolt, and in the groove on the damper.

 

Or just set the dial to zero and use the degree tape you already glued to the damper.

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Looks like you won’t need this

 

4b1f15a3563e14d49d0d6069458bdc2e.jpg

 

 

I’ve never seen that dial on the timing gun before. Too cool.

 

Is you water pump Turing the correct rotation? , I remember gm switched between clockwise and counter clockwise. Or vice versa.

 

I think you had it correct for the rotation for the 3.4 but your belt was routed different from the stock 3.4

 

The other thing you need to know if how to trip the cpu for timing the 2.8. The federal emission Vacuum advance is simple, disconnect the vacuum line and temporary plug it. I want to say the 2.8 with that distributor you connect something to a plug in the engine bay sending in to a timing loop. At least that’s the way a lot of 1980s car and early obd ecu did it

 

 

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How the hell are you supposed to time those engines with the Vara-Jet E2SE ? Just disconnect the plug at the distributor?

Looking at my Haynes manual it covers the vacuum advance but not the electronic distributor.


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Well I did the best I could 

here's how it looks 

These are pics of the engine running and the timing light flashing 

 

B5F85090-D141-44CF-9162-7B89C55D42B9.jpeg

CC7D9FEB-EDA4-482C-899F-BE199693645C.jpeg

601DEA04-1A74-4A55-98AF-314057D9CD22.jpeg

 

Kinda hard to know when you don’t know exactly what rpm your at

How am am I suppose to know if I set it correctly ? 

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42 minutes ago, AMC86Kid said:

Well I did the best I could 

...

Kinda hard to know when you don’t know exactly what rpm your at

How am am I suppose to know if I set it correctly ? 

 

Basically, drive it. With the radio OFF. If you feel a hesitation / flat spot when you accelerate from, let's say, 45 to 55 in high gear, it's possibly retarded (not enough advance). If you hear pinging under load at low speed, it's too far advanced.

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Not sure if it’s still sold when I first got my 2.8 xj it didn’t have a tach so I borrowed a old fiends mechanics tach and hooked it up to do the first tune up. I suppose you could buy a aftermarket tachometer and wire it up to get the rpm reading, it fairly straight forward.

Modern cars don’t really need the old school tune up tools because the pcm has a readout for all the necessary data.

How does it sound?



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Will do Eagle but first I got to figure out how to wire the alternator to the battery so that my battery doesn’t die when driving  

 

Green Mesa you got a link to any good aftermarket Tachs ? 

 

As as far as how it sounds 

listen to it from the video I posted and you tell me what you think 

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What Eagle said.

When I learned this stuff it was the sound of the engine that I would pay attention to, but then I knew the car and I suppose how it was supposed to sound. Any pinging or flat spots driving I’d go back and start over.

 

Actually had to do all of this basic stuff last summer, we picked up a old Toyota sports car the original owner and his buddy put a new engine in it, then the car sat for 13 years as the guy was working over seas. They had it all kinds of jacked up, so bad we couldn’t time the engine because bad knock sensors , vacuum lines and other things were completely screwed up. I had to set the timing completely by feel to begin to get a starting point. The fact the car even idled when I got it was a minor miracle, cause it shouldn’t have with the timing as far off as it was. The estate paid some run of the mill mechanic to get it running but he couldn’t figure out how to get it driving. That’s just sad that someone doing this for a profession, taking people’s money to fix this car was out of their depth when a code reader couldn’t tell them what to do.

 

I know original owner loved this car his dream was to retire, restore it and go driving. But what they did trying to fix it was worse than leaving the old engine in even with it burning oil.

 

It was kind of like car archaeology, once we worked out enough of the errors to get the rpm right and the computer error free long enough we could set the timing properly, turned out It Wasn’t that far off with our seat of the pants trial and error.

 

One old test use to be starting off in second, if the car didn’t sputter or bog down it was tuned properly. Could just be an old mechanics tale.

 

Is you mj drivable?

 

 

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Will do Eagle but first I got to figure out how to wire the alternator to the battery so that my battery doesn’t die when driving  

 

Green Mesa you got a link to any good aftermarket Tachs ? 

 

As as far as how it sounds 

listen to it from the video I posted and you tell me what you think 

I pick one up from advanced auto a few years ago to test how accurate the jeeps tach was, picked up a couple 89 clusters and wanted the best tach of the bunch,

I’ll try to find out which one I got. Amazon would be another good choice.

 

I couldn’t get the video to load in my phone, may try the laptop in the morning.

 

You using the original alternator or the 3.4 ?

 

 

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