[James 72 240Z]

I've been having lots of timing/acceleration problems on a new motor. Swapped in a known-to-be-working distributor and problem solved. What a rush. There is nothing like hard pulling Z motor. I can break loose in first and second and get a nice chirp in third. All I gotta do now is find some smooth roads.

Just wanted to offer some advice for people having timing/acceleration/backfiring problems. Make sure it is not the ignition and make sure again. It's useless to adjust anything else unless your ignition is working right. I couldn't believe my distributor was crap because it was a freshly rebuilt unit from Motorsport Auto and I wasted a lot of hours looking elsewhere when the problem was right in front of me.

 

[Al 260Z]

Right On !

Thanks for the tip!

Another lesson at
Ye ol school o hard knockers!!

Just getting into dizzy curving issue. Gotta save up and get me one o those fancy timing lights w/ the digital display and advance knob.

--------- Al

 

[zpeed]

Re: Right On !

hey james, what are you running in that 240z... to get the chirp in 2nd.. my car an't running right... as you know... its nathan the guy u've been emailing about the problems...

hopefully i'll get it running tommorrow hopefully....HOPEFULLY./..

good luck with the car now anyway

 

[bakachan]

what could be wrong with the msa distributor?

magnetic pickups?
initial advance (springs/weights problem) ?
vac advance pot leaking?

cant be shaft end play because they re-bush them
there are alot of people that have backfiring problems
and one of the first thing people say is check for a vacuum
leak when it could be something in the distributor causing the problem
ide be curious to see whats wrong with it

 

[James 72 240Z]

I'm curious too...

All I know is that while I had vacuum advance I had no mechanical advance. In fact, the timing would retard under high revs. Figure that one out.

It's not the ignition module cause I tested as per FSM. I also swapped them and had the same result no matter what distributor they were mated with. Magnetic pickup maybe? Also, my MSD Digital 6 ignition box did not work at all with the MSA distributor but works like a charm with the boneyard one I have now.