Help on an Old Ford Truck!!!

[Gibby_SVT]

My older brother just did a bunch of work to his old Ford (1979 F-150) and is having some timing trouble. From what it sounds like, he put the distributor in backwards. The question is: how does he find TDC? Which mark should be where on the harmonic balancer? Any help is greatly appreciated guys!

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[frdtch05gt]

Easiest way to find TDC is pull the #1 plug and put your thumb over the hole, bump the motor over until you feel the compression. You should also be able to see the top of the piston as well. That's the way I do it at work since most of the timing markers on the older trucks are long gone, the trucks I work on are fleet vehicles. Once you have it on TDC, put the distributor in with the rotor as close to #1 as possible, and that will give you a good starting point for setting the timing.

 

[Gibby_SVT]

Thanks. As I had suspected he did have the distributor in backwards. He flipped it 180* and has it running like a champ. I forgot about the thumb trick, I'll remember that one.

 

[batman]

Easiest way to find TDC is pull the #1 plug and put your thumb over the hole, bump the motor over until you feel the compression. You should also be able to see the top of the piston as well. That's the way I do it at work since most of the timing markers on the older trucks are long gone, the trucks I work on are fleet vehicles. Once you have it on TDC, put the distributor in with the rotor as close to #1 as possible, and that will give you a good starting point for setting the timing.

just did that last night aha