no line on mercury flywheel

[rick50]

I have a 1968 mercury 125 inline thunderbolt ing. Cannot find a solid white line on the flywheel to align with the distributer arrow. Both my clymer and mercury manuals show a white line.Ihave the 3dots on the flywheel which come up to tdc on the cowl. That is what i have my arrow aligned with now.Im afraid my timing is not where it should be.Maybe the flywheel has been changed thru the years. Wanting to use Clams link and sync system for inlines,but want to make sure the alignment is correct first. I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

[Aqualift]

Re: no line on mercury flywheel

I have a 68 Merc 500 (in addition to my 65) that had it's flywheel altered by a previous owner. Neither the white dot or line were correct. All i did was remove the No.1 cylinder's spark plug and verify that the arrow of the distributor pulley is pointing at the crankshaft (center of flywheel), when the No.1 piston is at TDC. It was. I made a new mark on the flywheel. Then I painted new dots on the flywheel opposite the TDC timing mark on the front support cowling timing sticker. Worked just fine.

If your unsure, just recheck the No.1 piston to see if it's at TDC when the distributor pulley arrow is pointing at the center of the flywheel. Ignore those three white dots at first.