The engine says LH rotation but I swear the harmonic balancer rotate clockwise meaning the timing marks in the attached picture are moving down. That would indicate to me that the '10' shown before the '0' would be 10* BTDC. It's entirely possible that I'm doing it backwards
. If it is backwards, tho, there's no mark for 10 on the other side.
As viewed from behind.
That's correct.
No, looks like you're reading it right. BTW, that tape isn't factory, a PO has stuck it on. Probably didn't have an advance timing light. This is one of the ways around that.That would indicate to me that the '10' shown before the '0' would be 10* BTDC. It's entirely possible that I'm doing it backwards
I've tried cleaning the flame arrestor as this one is black. Sprayed it down with some brake cleaner and ran compressed air through it. It feels like air moves freely through it. The only reason I haven't replaced it is that I tried to run the boat without the flame arrestor on it when on the water and it does the same thing it's been doing.
So I did verify firing order and wires were running to correct cylinders. One thing I did notice yesterday - there's a notch on the actual balancer, I'm assuming indicating TDC. It was not lined up with the mark on the block when I had the #1 cylinder at what I thought was TDC. I covered the hole for the spark plug with my thumb and turned the key until I felt pressure blow hard against my thumb, which I understood to be compression stroke. When I checked the mark, it wasn't lined up. Not sure if there's a more precise way to check this.
Thanks. I haven't tried rotating by hand the balancer. I'll give that a shot. Sounds like I need to bite the bullet and buy an advance timing light.
Chris, should I have been able to tell if I had a bad cylinder when I did the compression test? Do you mean to unplug each plug wire individually and see if the engine changes idle?
This tests whether you're getting proper combustion in each cylinder. So multiple reasons, but this will tell you whether each cylinder is actually producing power.
Yes.. And not only that the idle speed changes, but that it changes about the same amount for each cylinder.
I found a cracked exhaust manifold using a drop test.
The original issue was a lack of power at takeoff. I ran a compression test on the motor which I thought would rule out a cracked head gasket but maybe not. If it matters, the motor isn't in gear. Just idling in neutral. Not sure if that's still hard on the drive.
Even out of gear all the bit inside the drive are spinning.
The original issue was a lack of power at takeoff. I ran a compression test on the motor which I thought would rule out a cracked head gasket but maybe not. If it matters, the motor isn't in gear. Just idling in neutral. Not sure if that's still hard on the
I didn't know that. Thanks for that heads up. I adjusted the distributor back to where it was before I set the timing and the smoking stopped. I still don't understand why setting the timing to where the motor says set it seems to make it run worse.
