My new distributor staring in "The Adventure of the flying timing light!"

For a while now I've been fighting with an erratic idle, which eventually progressed into surging while I would be driving along. It got to the point where the car was just about undriveable.

At first I thought the carbs were worn out, but after a conversation with the Paul (the previous owner) I ruled them out. Paul had the carbs rebuilt not too long before I bought the car.

So I spent time tweaking and adjusting the carbs, thinking they just were out of adjustment. No change.

Next thought was that the Valves weren't set right.

I had my car over at Shayne Green's place this past weekend (for a new windshield, another blog entry will come on that). Shayne was kind enough to adjust the valves on my car for me, but noted that they were already adjusted with-in spec. He took the car for a spin and instantly knew the Distributor was on it's way out.

Shayne knew of a good distributor rebuild company based here in Portland, so off I went to get my distributor rebuilt.

Today the "new" distributor was ready to go. Installation was pretty simple.



There it is. Nice and clean! (I'll explain the blue engine block later.)

So when installing a new distributor it's a good time for setting the engine timing. It would make sense, after all.

Here's the mis-adventure of the night!

I went to set the timing at about 1:30 am. Pretty late, I know. So I didn't want to do it on my street corner, for fear of waking up the neighbors. I drove the car over to an empty parking lot not too far from the house where I could make lots of noise with out bothering anyone.

I get the timing light all hooked up with the engine off, everything is ready to go.



So right after I took this picture I went and started the car.

Suddenly I hear "WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP!" and the timing light goes flying through the air!

I never made sure the timing light cords were clear of the engine fan, and sure enough they wrapped around the fan, ripping the cord right out of the timing light and sending it sky bound.

So I didn't get the timing set with a light, and I ended up killing the timing light. The worst part about the situation is that the timing light I killed wasn't even mine! So now I owe my friend a new timing light.

Live and learn!