I have now ordered everything I need to do some proper work, save for the dizzy cap which was out of stock. From the view of owning a classic Porsche, living on the northern fringe of Europe really sucks, parts being faster and cheaper to get from the US than locally! ;)

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I'm now preparing to pull the ignition distributor out but I need some help deciding on if I am at TDC. I've pulled the engine to what I believe is TDC for #1. The rotor is pointing at the notch in the dizzy but there are two marks in the pully and I'm not sure which one to go for. From what I've read in other threads it should be the one on the left, and the red one would then be the 5 degree mark. But why would the 5 degree mark be "bigger" than the Z1 mark? Or is this common? Any clarification would be much appreciated. What are the potential problems of pulling the dizzy out with the cylinder not quite at TDC?

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Cheers, Björn

1. It does not matter if you are not excatly at TDC when you pull the dizzy. You will have to readjust your advance anyways when you put it back. What you want to avoid is to be 180 degrees opposite to TDC.

2. On mine (78SC), TDC is the left most mark, and I adjust my idle advance to the 5 deg mark to its right.

3. The 5 and 25 deg marks are bigger than the TDC mark, because the engine rotates clockwise, so the sparks occurs before TDC, which is exactly what you want to take into consideration the ignition kinetics of the air-gas mixture factoring piston velocity.

Yes, that is what I though, but I wanted to make sure. Thanks for the quick and clear reply!

No more excuses then, just have to pull the d**n thing out :eek:

Cheers, Björn

Good luck!

Here is the reference thread:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/333640-distributor-service-clean-lube-real-easy-without-removing-pinion-gear.html

I've now taken out and apart the distributor without any problems. It was not so very dirty as I had thought, but there were some large flakes here and there, not sure what they are made up of...

Is there any way to check that the weights can move as they should? I can't really say there is a difference in how loose they are now as compared to before cleaning. I can move them a few mm back and forth but no more, and I'm hesitant to use too much force. :confused:

/Björn

Here is a picture to illustrate my concern. I can only wiggle the weights a few mm back and forth ("A" arrow). As soon as they touch the arm at "B" they move no further. By looking at it I would think that the weights, while moving towards the stops, should make the axle turn (like "C" indicates), am I mistaken? So if the weights are not stuck, what could have seized to not allow the full movement?

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I've tried to read up a bit more on distributors in general and found this:
In the case of our distributors it should probably be CCW but otherwise, is this a correct description of how the distributor should function?

Here is a link to the page: Volvo Ignition

Yes that is a correct description. The job of the advance weights is to move "C" as you have shown in your picture. Try putting the rotor on and see if the rotor can rotate relative to the distributor housing. If not, I'd continue dismantling the distributor.

This may sound silly, but does your clock work? I had a similar problem with my 83 SC, once it started. I noticed that the clock stopped working around the same time. I replaced the 5A fuse on the clock and everything worked fine. (I also managed to find a diagrahm that showed this circuit also feeding the ECU box under the passenger seat.) THis fixed my running problem. My intermittent start problem was the result of a bad permatune box, that I replaced with a MSD box and have had no issues since.

Luckily, I didn't have to do any more dismantling. I put a lot of 5-56 on the top of the shaft and tried to turn in a bit more. Left it overnight and with some more turning it came loose.

I took it apart again and found lots of rust colored oil inside, probably dissolved from the upper shaft. Cleaned everything off and re-oiled. I can now turn the rotor about 20 degrees CCW and on release it springs back to the original position.

It will now go back in the car where new plugs and spark wires have been installed. Hopefully I will see a noticeable improvement on the performance of the car.

rr262: I don't currently have a clock installed, but with all I've found (stuck dizzy, broken wires) I hope that there is nothing more that needs fixing.

Will report back as soon as I get it going.

Cheers, Björn

So for my stupid clock theory: Fuse 18 feeds the clock, glove box light and other things. It also feeds the OXS relay for 1980-1983 cars per the Bently manual. In my case this turned out to be what was causing my engine to run very erractically once the car started. As soon as I replaced the fuse, everything ran fine.

Just to be sure, I would check that fuse 18 is ok...

I just came back from installing my freshly refurbished distributor and the car came to life after a few cranks. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/clap.gif

Idled fine at 1200-1300 RPM but I did not have time to take it for a spin tonight. Next up is to get it up to operating temp and set the timing.

rr262: When I bought the car the O2 system was halfway ripped out so I had to drive it without for a while before I could reinstall it. It does run like a pig without it but as the car ran fine now it seems like it works as it should.

Big thanks to all of you for helping out!

Cheers, Björn

Yesterday I took the car out for its first run post ignition overhaul. Let me tell you this, it was like someone had swapped the engine out for a new one. I couldn't believe the transformation, even my girlfriend who knows nothing about cars immediately noticed the difference. In was smoother, vastly more powerful and a substantial bit quieter. :D

So, all in all a very worthwhile effort! The sad bit was that before I could find some open road and let it rip it died on the side of the road with a depleted battery. Obviously it's not charging right so I need to look into that, hopefully the culprit is the very loose fan belt. But that is a story for another thread...

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Nice and informative write up. Good looking car. You are in for some real fun now.