rpgdeity : Vacuum Advance

Vacuum Advance
Post by rpgdeity on Apr 21, 2006, 6:23pm

I have the civilian 12V distributor in my 230 right now. How do I tell if my vacuum advance is working correctly?

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by luckypabst on Apr 21, 2006, 7:22pm

Put a mityvac to it and see if it holds vacuum first. With a timing light hooked up, begin applying and releasing vacuum to make sure the mark "moves" on the pulley nice and smooth.

There's not a lot more you can do without a distributor machine. Only thing that could really be wrong assuming the diaphragm is good is the spring getting weak and giving you the wrong advance curve.

Chris

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by rpgdeity on Apr 21, 2006, 9:22pm

Well, guess its a good thing I decided to check the timing (I checked about 8 months ago and it was fine), found out that I am 20 deg. BTC. According to the manual I'm supposed to be 5 deg. BTC. 15 deg. off can't be good, lol.

So here is my next question: I loosened the dist. bolt to turn the dist and adjust the timing, only problem is that both slides are all the way against the studs in the one direction , CCW. If I turn the dist CW the timing gets worse, but I can't go anymore CCW to improve the timing.

So what do I do now? Can I take all the spark plug wires and rotate them one spot to the right (CW) as to change my timing 60 deg, so that I can turn the dist 55 deg. CCW to get my timing to 5 deg? (Hope that makes sense to someone, lol). Any help would be appreciated, I've been working on the Jeep for the past week trying to get it running for tomorrow, and now it runs, but the timing is way off. I really hope I can get this figured out tonight.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by luckypabst on Apr 21, 2006, 10:33pm

Can't remember for sure, does the distributor have a drive gear, or is it a "screwdriver tip" that's driven by the oil pump? If it has a drive gear, you can pull the dist and turn it one tooth in the right direction and you'll have to re-index the oil pump drive.

Is there enough slot in the plate to cover a 60 degree change in timing? This might be the easiest way to do it.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by rpgdeity on Apr 22, 2006, 12:37am

Well, it looks like I really messed things up. The engine was running just fine even with it saying that it was 20 deg., guess I should have left good enough alone....

I've got one Chilton book telling me the firing order and everything, then I have another manual telling me the complete opposite.

Now after I have pulled everything apart to try to fix it, I can't even get the engine running at all. Its like 10:30 and I don't think I'll get it figured out by tonight. Looks like after months of planning and a week of hard work to get my Jeep running for tomorrows SAR Jeep get-together, I won't have my Jeep there. This really sucks (sorry, I just had to vent).

Anyway, thank you everyone for your help so far. I had the engine running just fine at one time. I'll just have to regroup and get her going again.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by hiker on Apr 22, 2006, 12:46am

Just for reference, the correct timing order is on the valve cover of the 230 engine.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by rpgdeity on Apr 22, 2006, 3:12am

So its 1:00 in the morning now and I finally got the engine running again. I have it back to the original way I had it before I messed with it. Still says its running at 20 deg., but the engine sounds fine and it runs smooth and idles. So I'm going to leave it alone untill I have some more time to mess with it.

The valve cover and several manuals says the correct timing order. What I don't get is how I had two different manuals (one was Chilton, and not sure what the other one was as it was really really old) and they both said different things. One said the dist. turns CCW, while the other said CW. One gave the #1 plug close to the engine, other gave it at 90 deg. to engine. I just for the life of me could not get it timed right. I even had my neighbor owns several Willies Jeeps come over to help me out. He couldn't figure it out either. The slots to adjust the dist. just weren't giving us enough room to adjust it. It was weird...

Anyway, we developed a few theories regarding what we could do to fix this, and I am going to tear into it later and figure it out. But for right now I'm going to bed, lol. Looks like I will be able to make the annual SAR Jeep Patrol drivers training after all. Just hope I can drive all day with only 5 hours of sleep, lol.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by wrecker on Apr 22, 2006, 9:31am

If the engine is running well, I wouldn't be quite as concerned about the 20 degree indication. Being certain of where number one is might help. It sounds like you are a lot closer to the correct time than your light is indicating. Since you have the civvy dist, you prolly have some innacurate manuals as well and the good running engine is a better indicator than your light at this point.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by luckypabst on Apr 22, 2006, 10:53am


Quote: <TABLE class=bordercolor cellSpacing=1 width="90%"><TBODY><TR><TD width="100%"><TABLE class=quote cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD width="100%">If the engine is running well, I wouldn't be quite as concerned about the 20 degree indication. Being certain of where number one is might help. It sounds like you are a lot closer to the correct time than your light is indicating. Since you have the civvy dist, you prolly have some innacurate manuals as well and the good running engine is a better indicator than your light at this point.</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>


Yea.

Also, if the timing marks are on a steel ring that's rubber mounted to the pulley, those are notorious for moving around after so many decades of service. It'd be a good idea to verify that the timing marks are accurate.

Chris

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by rpgdeity on Apr 23, 2006, 8:06pm

Yeah, when I was turning the engine over by hand to set it at 5 deg there was some noticable "play" (not sure exactly how many deg.) in the pulley on the crankshaft. I was looking at the online manuals, and it doesn't appear that there is any rubber in the connection between the pulley and the crankshaft, but it appears there are a couple of bolts that holds it on, so I am going to check those tonight.

The other thing that I kinda developed as a theory is that I noticed my dist. cover is 180 deg off of what one of my civi 230 manuals says (#1 plug is shown away from eng., my #1 plug is close to the engine). So I was thinking of taking the dist out, flipping the end shaft that has the offset screwdriver like tip, and putting it back in. Then I will flip my cap to what is shown. I have no clue if this would help, but it might make the adjustment slots change enough that I will have enough degrees of rotation to set my timing.

The problem I was running into was I was physically undable to rotate the dist enough to correct the timing. The dist is turned all the way CCW untill both adj slots are bottomed out. I was almost tempted to modify the slots so that I could turn my dist more, but decided that was not a fix and that something must be wrong here. Anyway, now that I have more time I am going to play with it and see if I can correctly fix it.

Although I have to say, if indeed the engine is running 15 deg. retarded, it is quite the testiment of how far these engines will run out of time and still run seemingly fine.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by brute4c on Apr 23, 2006, 8:36pm

The rotation is COUNTER CLOCKWISE on the 230 distributors.

#1 on the cap should be up at the top near the engine.

If it is at the bottom and the adjustment does not fall into the normal range on the top and bottom adjustment slot, I would have to guess someone installed the distributor 180 degrees out and managed to make up for it with the 2 timing slots and reversing the wires on the cap...

My civvy distributor has the vaccum advance unit pointing at 6 o'clock as it leaves the housing...almost perfectly straight down...maybe just a hair to the 5 o'clock side.
The #1 plug wire is at 12 o'clock to 12:30...almost perfectly straight up at the top.

Get yours in the motor like that first and then play with the timing...I have tons of room in both directions to adjust the timing.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by rpgdeity on Apr 24, 2006, 12:13am

Thanks, I think my plug wires are 1 spot off. My vacuum advance unit is pointing at about the 4 o'clock position with #1 plug towards the engine. If I rotate the dist CW and move the plugs one spot over, then I would have room to adjust the dist both CW and CCW. I'm going to try this first thing tomorrow and see what happens. This might be important info to collect for future use, since neither of the two civvy 230 engine manuals I have seem to be correct.

Re: Vacuum Advance
Post by brute4c on Apr 24, 2006, 8:27am

To check where you engine wants the #1 plug wire you need to:

Pull the #1 spark plug...pulling them all makes this easier as their is less resistance due to compression...and slowly turn the engine over, preferrably by hand with a thin screwdrver or other object in the #1 spark plug hole. Roll the motor until you get the piston to Top Dead Center...highest possible position as measured by the screwdriver or other tool.

Check the crank timing pointer to the timing marks and see if it is at, or very very close to, 0 degrees. If it is, good! If it is off, then you may have had the balancer slip...someone reported this happening to theirs about 4 to 6 months ago...

If the marks are good, then take off the distributor cap and see where the tip of the rotor is pointing...whichever wire position on the cap is directly above the tip of the rotor, thats #1.

Let us know what you find...