After much waiting for day over 32 degree F, I had a chance to go at my crippled Amazon today. After removing the radiator and fan and expecting to find a busted timing gear, I was rewarded with a perfect gear perfectly aligned to it's timing marks.... wtf?

So, that out of the way, I buttoned the car back up and went back at the timing/distributor/distributor gear. After re-arranging my wires for the Nth time, I was finally rewarded with a hesitant firing and finally a running engine.

It's not running very well, but it is running. I figure my timing is still not right, but I need some help to get that sorted out.

#1 Smiths Tach. I have a working crane/allison ignition unit. It is not new, so I had no intructions for it. I had to unhook the wire between my Smiths Tach and the capacitor. I can't figure out how to get this wired up with the electronic ignition. One end for sure goes to the coil +, but the end that went to the capacitor has no home. It kills the engine if I touch it to anything, so I figure it needs a hot wire of some sort (not ground). Should it go to the second wire split out from my cut coil wire to ignition unit, or should it go somewhere else (fusebox block maybe)? I need my tach working so I can set my idle and timing.

#2 The car now requires half choke to start and run, but it is definitely running rich and still running poorly. It sounds "off" and is kicking a fair amount of smoke from the tailpipe. I've been able to shut the choke off for a bit, but the car almost immediately starts to make sharp backfire/misfire sounds and quickly dies. Minor rotations of distributor only make this worse... Trying to drive the car when it is running like this quickly kills the engine with similar fanfare.

Considering the unpleasant way the car ran a few weeks back, I wonder if I am just now getting the engine back to the point it was at when it failed me. That is, I'm back to the problem I parked it because of, now that I've sorted out my ignition monkey business.

#3 I've read how to set static timing, but I seem to be missing something there. I've checked Ron Kwas site and checked, adjusted, and confirmed that the distributor gear is oriented correctly to 0 BTC degrees and with #1 cylinder at TDC. However, unless I overlooked it, there is no direction on orienting the rest of the distributor housing - especially when you've got a chopper wheel and optical sensor. I think some of my troubles stem from not being sure that a loosened housing and cap is oriented properly to the rotor. I figured that rotor should be point to the #1 wire plug on the cap when all is in static sync, but that did not work for me. I had to adjust it pretty far back to get it to start and run. It would not work at all when I had the points-distributor in there...

Am I missing something here, or could this itself be a symptom or the cause of my original engine problem?


As far as the previous suggestions I had water in the fuel, etc, I flushed the carbs and cleaned everything. with so many variables, I can't be sure if I fixed it or if it was ever a problem in the first place.

So, thanks for all the help so far! If you can help me pull her over the last hump, I'll be very happy back behind the wheel of my Swedish iron.