I installed a new distributor o-ring on this car and now it won't start. It has the 3S-GE engine. According to the repair manual that I have, with the timing mark lined up with 0 and the distributor pointing down at the number 1 cylinder, the slot in the camshaft should be nearly vertical and offset to the right. The distributor has a similar key. It fits right into the slot on the camshaft. There's really only one way you can insert this distributor. I have checked this at least three times, but the car will not start. Turning it over makes it backfire, but it never catches, which tells me that the timing must be way out of spec. What could I be doing wrong? The car was running great before the repair. The only other thing that I did was spray some brake cleaner on some greasy spots near the distributor before removal. Any ideas?
It sure seems to be firing as you describe. With timing marks aligned on what I assume is the compression stroke the rotor points almost straight down at the number 1 cylinder. After one revolution of the crankshaft, the rotor points almost straight up. Which direction should it be pointing?
do you have the match marks on the di shaft lined up? should be two triangles, also are you sure its on no.1 compression? get a tester and test the resistance of the di pickups, they should be about 160-180 ohm.. you did say it worked before, so i doubt its toast.
I'll pull it again and check the marks on the di shaft. On compression stroke, notch on camshaft should be offest to the right, correct?
This is going to sound silly but i just wanna make sure we cover the basics. you have got the distributor cap on correctly? screwed down and the correct plugs going into the correct points? this is what the problem sounds like it could be because as you correctly stated, the Distributor only goes in one way and if that's all you've removed then only two things can be wrong, timing and ignition order. now if you place the distributor in and secure it mid way either side of which way it can be turned then your almost guaranteed to get it firing even if the timing is out of optimal specs, however if your plugs are igniting in the incorrect sequence, as can be caused by incorrectly replacing the spark plugs leads, you'll get ignition at the incorrect time of the the stroke.
if it is backfiring you can probably just turn the dizzy around 180 degrees and stuff it back in.....its worth a shot
Thanks to everyone for the responses. I will double check everything that you mentioned. One interesting thing to note is that on all the 3SGE distributors that I see pictures of online, the cap points the plug wires toward the BACK of the engine bay. My distributor is different, however. The cap points the plug wires toward the FRONT of the engine bay. The previous owner stated that the owner before him had replaced the engine with a later 3SGE, but I'm not sure what year. Here's a picture of an engine bay exactly like mine. It's not my car, but notice the forward facing distributor cap. Just want to make sure that I'm clear on how mine is set up so when I talk about how the rotor is pointing it makes sense to everyone. The number 1 position on the cap is at the bottom when installed on the distributor. I have a to borrow a digital camera, but I hope to get some pictures up by tomorrow so hopefully I can get this solved.
Hmm, that's odd. Both my 86 & 89 3SGE's point forward like that pic. Could it be a 2nd Gen 3SGE perhaps?
Here are some pics. To my eye, everything about the timing set up looks right. One thing I forgot to mention in my original post is that I did pull the wires from the spark plugs to replace the valve cover gaskets, but I'm 100% sure they were put back on correctly. I'm starting to suspect that the plug wires may be a problem here. They're Bosch wires, and these were absolute junk on my son's V6 Toyota 4x4 truck--wires came apart internally. Maybe the act of pulling them caused them to separate. Took a little tug to get them off the plugs. I checked the harness connection to the distributor itself to ensure that I didn't break a wire and it looks good. Anyway, first things first. Here is a picture of the distributor with the cap on: Here is a picture showing the position of the rotor with the cap off. Mark on crank pulley is lined up with the 0 mark, so should be exactly at TDC. Here is a shot of the end of the cam with the distributor pulled. Position looks like it's right. Notch is offset to the right. Finally, here is a picture of the distributor prior to being reinstalled. Lined up the notches before putting it back in, but it can really only go in one way. Let me know if this looks right to everyone. By the way, what plugs do you recommend in this car? NGK? Denso? Platinum or standard? I really appreciate all the help!
Stock the 3S-GE came with platinum plugs so if you've got the coin then by all means, i try to use platinum, you tend to get longer life outta them also. NGK and Denso are both top brands to either one won't be necessarily any better than the other. Also can you post a pick from a further back like the first one, just so i can track the spark plug cables, also a broader pic might show us something else that looks a little off. Also what does your cap look like on the inside? i had to replace mine in the last year and my replacement was brown but yours looks to still be the stock one, the Car is over 20yrs old so extensive wear in the Dizzy cap isn't uncommon and may also contribute to your issue.
Well, I finally managed to resolve my starting issue. As it turns out, there were several contributing factors. The timing set up was correct. However, I pulled the number 1 plug and found that the plug well was about half full of oil. The plug itself was absolutely dripping with oil. I suspect that my daughter may have spilled oil while adding it to the engine (the #1 plug wire was also oily), and since the car has been out of commission for a few weeks while I fixed a myriad of other problems, this probably gave the oil that was trapped in the plug well time to work its way down onto the plug electrode. She normally drives it every day, which probably burned off any small amounts of oil that would seep in over night. However, with such a lengthy downtime, it had time to seep into the cylinder and accumulate on the plug. I cleaned the plugs and put a new wireset on the car. Still no start. So I bought a new cap, rotor and plugs in addition to the wireset. On the old cap, only the #1 and #4 cylinders were marked. Although I had removed the plug wires from the spark plugs during the valve cover gasket change out, I had not removed them from the cap. However, when I put the new wires on the old cap, I think in my weary and worn out state from working on this thing that I might have crossed the #2 and #3 cylinders, which caused the second no start problem after I had discovered the oil fouling issue. When I put everything back together with all new ignition parts, it fired right up. I really appreciate all the help and suggestions. This is a very useful and helpful board. I've learned a lot here about this car by browsing the all information available on this site.
Glad you got 'er solved. Sometimes it's the basic things. That old distributor cap was aftermarket. I notice that on my Back Arnley cap that it only had #1 and #4 marked, whereas the OEM one has all four marked.
