I spent several hours out in the cold garage working on this today. It still doesn't start and I'm out of ideas to try and out of tollerance for the plumeting air temperatures.

btw: the valve cover is off until I get this solved, I do not have a timing light, and there are no points in my distributor. I have reasonable compression in all four cylinders


Initially, I spent some time trying to make sure the distributor was properly synched up with TDC on #1 cylinder. I found TDC by removing the spark plug and turning the crank with the fanblade until both intake has opened and close and that the exhaust valve had not yet opened and the rotor was pointing towards #1. I felt inside the cylinder with a long screwdriver and adjusted the crank back and forth to confirm that I was at the "top"

The position of the rotor looked very wrong so I removed the distributor and moved the distributor gear until it was pointing towards #1. The manuals say that for B20E and F and the rotor should be pointing towards #1 at an angle about 5 degrees off the straight line formed between the two distributor base bolt holes. There were only two gear positions in that range, so I dropped the gear in at what appeared to be the closest setting and carefully moved the crank until the gear mated up to the oil pump. I wired up the plugs so that the rotor was on or about to contact the #1 spark plug wire

I also checked the plug wires for CC firing order 1-3-4-2 and tried rotating them CC until every combination had been tried.

I also removed and carefully checked over the electronic ignition system in the distributor. I was incorrect in stating that it was a Crane system. It is actually an "Allison" ignition. There are no points in it. I really know nothing at all about this device except that it has always worked perfectly and it appears undamaged in any way. I did remove the entire distributor and took it inside for a careful cleaning.

I checked the timing gear marks on the front pulley. TDC on #1 appears to correspond to the second tick mark on the pulley. This pulley actually came from my B18 (it was infinitely cleaner) and does not have the inscribed timing values on the pulley. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, other than it is more difficult to read.

I also pulled all four spark plugs and re-gapped them to .025 - .030.

I charged the battery up and made numerous attempts to start the car after every change.

I got one brief milisecond of ignition when I had rotated the wires but it never started or even acted like it was close to starting. It also only happened one time. No brief sparks, no random pops. Nothing. I've rechecked that there is a spark passing through the wires. Fuel is definitely getting into the cylinders (gas-wet sparks) yet there is no ignition. The ignition unit is hooked up and all the car's systems have power and operate normally.


Even if my timing was all screwed up, then the engine shoud at least fire randomly, but it acts like the sparks are not getting a pulse or are not sparking, yet my test tool clearly shows me an electrical pulse going to the spark plugs. It just makes no sense.