The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay Timing jumping around

Good news: we have finally started the truck and even drove it around for a while. Saturday was wonderful.

Truck: '37 1/2T
Engine: '51 car block

Bad News: Since loosening the screw to set the timing correctly (and cleaning all of the grease off and from around the distributor and octane selector) the timing is jumping around quite a bit. If I reset the timing it starts and runs just fine for up to 5 minutes, then it dies out and will not restart. I turn the engine back "on ball" and open the cap and the rotor is not at #1 any longer.

I do have some play in that the distributor moves around a little bit, but it doesn't seem like enough to cause this problem. Is there anything else I should be looking at?

I understand that there is a brass bushing that wears and causes the wobble, which bushing is it? How big should it be? Is a rebuild something I can do?

Who are the reputable rebuilders around?

I do have another distributor from another 216. I may try it tomorrow. I would like to be able to "check out" the spare before I put it in.

Any help would be great.

From your description that sounds like you have a sheared pin at
the distributor driven gear. Easy enough to check. Just pull
the distributor and check it out, should be rather obvious.
Don't know how it could be moving out of time any other way
if all your clamps are locked down securely.

dg

The drive gear turns a little bit but does not rotate fully.

Justin

Any movement at all between the gear and the shaft is too much. Replace the distributor. Sometimes it's possible to drill a larger hole and use a bigger pin to take the slack out of the assembly, but use a solid pin (not a hollow roll pin) and rivet it to be sure there's no slop. Driving the oil pump puts enough stress on the pin to wallow out the holes if there's any movement between the shaft and the gear.
Jerry

Thanks Jerry