BobOne

Help appreciated! 305 TBI, 1988, auto trans, no stock a/c I'd recently done a valve job, and had managed to get the car running on the driveway -- it seemed to be running fine and would accept some throttle while sounding fairly normal. But it turned out that the front intake manifold seal had slipped forward during installation so I took it apart again to that level to re-do the gaskets. I put it back together, with the rotor pointing towards the driver again as I had pulled it out (as you know the distributor will seat in two 180-degree opposite directions...and I think the rotor will only go onto the distributor in one direction, correct?). So that should have preserved the correct 180-degree orientation of the distributor. My memory is weakest on this of the remaining steps because of time issues, but I know that I attempted to make note of the correct distributor orientation and return it to that place -- and of course I did not crank the engine during the intake manifold work (that is, importantly, with the distributor off). When I went to set the timing, I was having trouble finding the mark again for a while, so I painted the harmonic balancer flat black and made the timing mark nice and white. I was able to find the mark again at that point, and attempted to retard it to the correct location but found that I had to move the plug wires by one position clockwise to allow the timing mark to come back to the zero mark where it had been set when it was most recently running. The engine would not run at this point but I was getting spark and fuel (with kickbacks and minor fires at the TBI intake. I performed variations of the connection/disconnection procedure for the EST connector in case I was not making the computer reset in the manner I did right before the engine was most recently running. I had no success with this but rigorously followed the following procedure while making written note of it so I would be sure what I did for discussion purposes here. Here's that procedure: Disconnect EST connector Turn ignition off Reset timing to zero with timing light (car would not start at this setting) Battery disconnect Plug in EST Wait a minute or so Hook up battery Attempt start - fail, with unburnt fuel kickback through TBI Suggestions, please? I'm going to go out, attempt restart in case it was just flooded, then pull the cap so I can look at the rotor, then I'll look back here. It's 1:49pm Pacific Time on Saturday.

BobOne

Thanks everyone, that problem's solved. It's embarrassing but I'll leave the post up anyway unless someone wants me not to. It turned out that the distributor was 180 degrees off. The car runs but not well. I have to order spring stuff and dig back in to that level to get it right. Don't know whether I should try to smog it like this but it might get me around town OK.