The timing light was attached and working and it was off. After that test I loosened the distribtuor. I remember roughly where it was positioned and have put it back and everywhere close to the location with no luck. I have sprayed it with the WD-40 and will try again soon.

You need to just start at the begining and ask yourself these questions:

1. Are you getting spark to the plugs? Easiest way to tell is pull a plug, connect the wire to it and hold the base of the plug to a clean ground, a strut nut will work well. Have someone crank the engine, you should see a blue spark between the electrodes on the plug. Timing settings will have no effect on wether or not you have spark.

My guess it that you don't have spark, if the timing is even close it should try to start, if not at least be backfireing through the carbs or exhaust.

2. No spark check for voltage at the coil and dist with key in On position, did you perhaps knock off the wire to the dist, or off of one of the coil connections or the dropping resistor?? This is assuming that you are using the original points type dist?

3. Standing on the drivers side of the car looking down on the dist, the #1 spark plug wire should be about in the 10 o'clock position. BUT it may not be anywhere close if the dist/oil pump has been inproperly installed. DON'T switch a bunch of stuff around to get this, but if you can rotate the dist so this 10 o'clock position is available your timing should be in the run area and allow the car to start if you have spark and fuel.

8 oclock

  montoya_fan01 said:

8 oclock

Very interesting, I was going by my engine, looks like sometime in the past mine was changed, and not correctly!

Opps, wait, we're talking too different things, I am refering to start position on dist rotation refrencing plug one if wired correctly. So using your pic montoya_fan01 and looking at my running engine, my dist is rotated so the #1 wire is at about a 10 o'clock position. There is a difference for me also as I'm running a ZX dist which has a further distance between wires and the cap is also a little different where the hold downs are.

It gets better. I went back out this morning to see if all was dry and to follow the advise on this thread. Now my formerly perfectly charged battery is out of juice. It was just fine yesterday. I didnt leave anything on (like the headlights) as far as I know. Everything was hooked up like it was before I cleaned the engine and messed with the disti cap. Any ideas on what would cause sudden battery drain? If we were trying to start the car for 15-30 minutes would that do it since the alternator has no chance to recharge?

A half hour of cranking would for sure put a drain on the battery. The starter is the heavest drain on the battery.

I remember going through this process when I first started working on cars. It is very difficult to learn all of the things that most of us learned "the hard way". We screwed it up! It's funny how much we all learn through informal learning.

I am guessing you simply have a wet distributor. Try cleaning the points and spraying WD40 into it. When it has dried out, it will start right up and you will be able to set the timing. You do know how to set the timing, right?

God I hope so. Connect and shine timing light at marks. Slightly rotate distributor till marks line up. . . . .

What about the vacuum line? Connect or dis-connect? Plugged or unplugged? RPM's?? Total advance? Idle advance? Do you have a FSM for your model?There is a lot more to timing then just plugging in the light.

Well fellas I'm sure you will all sleep better tonight knowing that I got my car started and all is well. I jumped it and it fired right up so it must have been the water after all. I even tweaked the timing/distributor a bit to line things up and it runs better than ever. Thanks as always...

ddezso-

Good to hear all is well again!

-Ed