400se timing

[al 350i]

this could be the start of a lot of stupid question! but please bear with me. long story short, the car was parked for 10 years i had to strip down replace or clean many parts and suspect i might have screwed up the timing. can get the car to run but very rough and lots of black soot out the back, assume that the throttle position is out, idle screw out, fuel pressure wrong, air flow meter condition unknown. i want to start fresh and not finding the manual much help!

when i removed the distributor although i marked where it needed to go back, when refitting it, it didn't seem to want to go back in the hole without turning slightly, should i remove it and set the engine to TDC and refit? if so how do i know if the engine is on its inlet or outlet stroke, are there marks on the distributor and where should the rotor arm be pointing?

or is there a better place to start?

[njhucker]

If it runs at all then the timing must be near enough that you can use a timing light on it.
You say the car was parked up for 10 yrs. Was it running properly when last used? I assume it has nice fresh fuel in it.Was the fuel system cleaned, including ultrasonic cleaning of the injectors. Is it a flapper or hot wire?

[al 350i]

was parked up running, have changed fuel, fuel pump, fuel pressure valve. its a flapper type, wanted to do a static timing setup first then work my way from there

[ROOODBOY]

If the distributor hasn't been moved since it was running and then parked up then there really is no good reason to change it.

[Wedg1e]

al 350i said:

it didn't seem to want to go back in the hole without turning slightly, should i remove it and set the engine to TDC and refit? if so how do i know if the engine is on its inlet or outlet stroke, are there marks on the distributor and where should the rotor arm be pointing?

or is there a better place to start?

It's meant to turn slightly as it meshes with the helical drive gear on the camshaft. You normally position it with the rotor arm a few degrees off where you want it, then it aligns as the gears mesh. You also need to have the oil pump drive in the correct position (although I don't think the dissy will go in if it's not).
If the engine is at TDC on no 1 cylinder then it's in the right place, it won't be on a particular stroke. No. 1 is the left front cylinder when viewed from behind. Remove the l/h rocker cover gasket, turn the crank till the pulley TDC mark aligns with the index then chek to see whether you can rock either of the rockers on no.1 If you can it's in the right place. If you can't then the cam's 180 degees out so rotate the crank one full turn and try again. Ignore the bollx people talk about the crank pulley markings being wrong; it's so rare as to be forgettable.
Rotor arm can point anywhere you like, you can always move the HT leads around till they align. However Rover's preferred layout had no. 1 pointing more or less towards the front right corner of the l/h rocker cover as I recall. Some dist. caps have a line marked adjacent to no. 1 lead.
One slight complication is that there were two variants of the distributor fitted; one has the vacuum capsule on the side diametrically opposite the ignition amplifier while the other has it at about 60 degrees to it. This latter type is the easier to work with as the ignition amp ends up at the front and the vac capsule points roughly towards the middle of the car's nose. The other type is a pain because you don't have much room to rotate it to fine-tune the ignition timing.

Edit: I checked my car and No. 1 HT lead is pointing at the nearest corner of the rocker cover about an inch away

Edited by Wedg1e on Wednesday 29th June 02:24

[al 350i]

thats great, looks like i've got the later type, will start from there and work my way back.

my next question would be a rough guide of idle screw, can i wind it all the way in and then count how many turns to give a good stating point?

[HOTTY]

The one thing wedg1e highlighted to me regarding the dissy was the amount it can swing to find its correct setting.

My 350 had a longer lay up, he came round firstly checked that the injectors were working, they didn't but a tap with a hammer and hey they did.

Then with me turning it over he did the technical stuff buy revolving the dissy until it ran sweet as a nut.

The fuel was fresh but I haven't changed anything but the fuel filter, some fuses.

My advise find a friendly 400 owner and swap some parts before you buy new.

best of luck