Been trying to find out why my 68 144 with B18 seems down on power. I have gone over everything a number of times tuning it along the way. Engine seems to idle and run well but feels weak on the road. It was that way when the previous owner had the car.

On a suggestion from someone I put a timing light on the car. Timing was just short of 20 btc. I increased engine rpms. The timing never advanced. No vacuum advance on the distributor. Just mechanical. I tried to move the rotor back and forth by hand. It was rock solid. I moved the crankshaft back and forth and there was no play in the distributor. The breaker cam was frozen to the distributor shaft. I pulled the point plate and removed the breaker cam with a bit of effort. By the signs of the rust on the distributor shaft where the breaker cam rides I assume the distributor hadn't been oiled and it seized up. Also, the plate on the bottom of the breaker cam was lose.

I had a spare distributor. Previous owner had bought it off ebay. The papers for the sale came with the car. Papers said it was from a 71 unknown model with B20B engine. The last three numbers on that distributor are 099. My distributor is a 009. The breaker cam on the spare looked the same till I took a closer look.

On the original breaker cam the notch where the rotor sits points right at a high lobe on the breaker cam. On the spare the notch points before or past a high spot. I tried the cam. I didn't remove the distributor during the entire process. I set the point gap. Had engine set to TDC watching number one valves. Set the timing by eye. When the rotor was pointing to number one the points were no were close to opening or starting to open. If the original breaker cam was in there things would have aligned correctly.

Could the spare distributor 099 been for maybe a FI engine that used some different distributor cam breaker timing? This breaker cam isn't going to work. I'm going to have to try and locate a breaker cam for my engine. I assume getting the timing advance working again will restore some of the power that has been lacking in this engine.

Craig