I completely ruined the timing on my '85 GSL-SE and I am in desperate need of help. I lost the factory pulley timing mark when installing a new water pump onto my car. Tried to stick a screwdriver in to find TDC but I do not think it worked. Adjusting the timing a little bit in the distributor got the car almost starting, but I don't want to keep doing stopgap methods and want to get the timing dead on.

I know there is a way to determine timing using the flywheel keyway on a 12A, but I'm not exactly sure what the procedure is (pics would help greatly). I want to know if this procedure would work on the 13b RE-EGI, or if I need to take out my engine to do the timing another way.

Thanks all for helping me fix my dumb mistake.

 

I know the 12a has a flat spot on the flywheel that you can see if you remove the inspection plate on the intake/exhaust side of the engine near the transmission held on by 2 10mm bolts. Spin flywheel to flat side to match the flat side of the engine and you are well within the ballpark.

Don't know about GSL-SE timing so that would be someone else's specialty, I know 12a's you line the dot on the dizzy and drop it in.

 

You do not need to pull the engine to fix this. I'm not sure of the exact procedure for a GSL-SE but for the 12A carb engines its pretty simple. Get the flywheel at the right position is the best way.

https://www.rx7club.com/general-rota...y-off-1087412/

 

Kind of hard to see here, but I took a photo with the flywheel inspection cover on the top off. There seems to be a flat side.... This is the side that should point towards the 9:00 position, correct? From what I've heard, I was under the assumption that the eshaft was keyed and the eshaft had to be pointing the 9:00 position. I also know that there's another inspection cover, but I don't know the location of it. I can't exactly see where the 9:00 position is, so I'm wondering if there is a better way or position to go about doing this.

 

From the link I referenced below, read this entry: https://www.rx7club.com/general-rota.../#post11948662

 

The timing shouldn't have been affected by only removing the pulley. The issue comes when you remove the dizzy. And just moving the dizzy in its adjustment range isn't critical. The question would be, did you remove the dizzy?

 

Good question. If the dizzy was not pulled then line the rotor up on number one by rotating the engine and then you can probably put your pulley back on with the timing marks showing correctly. Otherwise you need to do it with the flywheel flat spot.

 

So I tried to put the flywheel flat in line with the inspection port, and set the distributor up again. Heard a loud bang and stopped everything.

Not sure if I just blew an apex seal but I think I should stop for now. Kind of an all-around bad situation.

For why I needed to redo the timing, one of my mechanic buddies told me that my car sounded out of time and was running really badly. I also installed a new water pump before, which shifted the mark on the pulley. I took the distributor out to hopefully re-time it using the apex seal method, but that didn't fix the idle.

 

Try this.

 

Thanks. I'll give it a try tomorrow, see how it goes. It's a little hard to see in the spark plug holes with my borescope since they are tiny, though.

I think my engine is okay. I checked with the borescope and the apex seals seem intact, but I couldn't get the best look.

At least I've learned that the machined part of the flywheel being indexed with the flywheel plate doesn't coincide with TDC.

If anyone has any other methods of finding TDC, it would be much appreciated.

 

Listen - it's been stated twice already, but you're not reading it: changing a water pump doesn't lose your timing marks on the Eccentric Shaft pulley. Go back and read that again.

If all you did was change the Water Pump, then the Eccentric Shaft Pulley wasn't affected - UNLESS YOU REMOVED IT. If you did that, you'd have bigger problems because the front Torrington Bearing would be destroyed due to falling into the gap unless you held the clutch down while performing the front eccentric shaft pulley removal.

That said, move the Eccentric Shaft to your timing mark, align the dot on the Distributor Shaft and stab the Distributor again. Note that the helical cut distributor drive gear causes the rotor to rotate slightly on install, and this can cause you to be one tooth off if you're not doing it properly. If you're one tooth off, you can usually time the engine using the adjustment range, but it will be all the way over one way or the other - depending in which direction your one tooth is off.

A properly stabbed Distributor will have timing set properly with the adjustment roughly in the center of the adjustment range.

 

I'm not completely sure of what you're referring to right now (since I have no knowledge of anything behind the front pulley), so I will take some pictures tonight to make 1000% sure that we are talking about the same thing. The eshaft pulley rotates around a hub - Is the hub the thing I am supposed to be worried about, or the pulley itself? The pulley is held on by 4 bolts, and I feel like it wouldn't clamp down on anything else.... but I'm not sure.

 

I used a straw from a carb/brake cleaner spray can and poked through both front spark plug holes until the front rotor felt like it was in the position in the picture. It should feel even through both holes.
That should get you close enough to put the pulley on in a position that's close to the marks.





Sounds like he removed the front pulley with 4x 10mm hex head screws, not the front hub with a 19mm head bolt. If there's a pulley for AC that would have had to come off to get the water pump pulley off.

 

Yes, I took off the front pulley and not the hub with the 19mm bolt. I believe that is connected to the eshaft.



I pulled off both pulleys to redo the timing. This is the hub in the above picture, and I believe that the bearing you were referencing should have remained in place since I did not remove the hub.



I used the method that j_tso mentioned to get close to TDC. I used a dental pick and tried not to scratch the rotor surface. From what I felt, the 2 spark plug holes had the same depth. I measured the offset with my finger to get a rough estimate.



After finding TDC, I lined up the eshaft pulley with the 4 holes on the hub. The mark on there before for timing matched almost perfectly with the TDC that I had found.

My only 2 questions are as follows:

-Does my TDC look correct and should I stab the distributor now, or did I do something wrong again?

-When I started my car before (incorrectly timed with the flywheel, so about 90 degrees off timing), I heard a loud pop/bang. I immediately stopped starting the car. Manually turning over the car, I can hear 6 wooshes all in time, however 2 of them sound considerably weaker than the other 4. Is this an indication that one of the engine seals/rotors has failed, and do I need an engine rebuild? Or can I attempt to start the car again? What is the advice for going about this situation? I don't have a rotary compression tester so I cannot readily test compression.

 

Hard to tell the cause unless you heard the 6 whooshes prior to the pulley being removed. It could have had weak compression for a long time.
The other way to check is with a regular compression tester with button held down. You won't get accurate numbers but look for how even the needle bounces.

A loud pop could have happened from the timing being way off.
When I assembled my 12A ten years ago I had the pulley on 180 degrees off. It started but the engine shook horribly because the ignition was trying to push the rotors backwards.
It was like that for a few minutes before I figured out what happened.

 

I was able to get it running again using the methods everyone provided. Compression seems okay... But the engine keeps flooding severely. Not sure why this keeps happening but I just deflood + leave the spark plugs out for a few hours and the engine starts up again. Idle is still rough, but my neighbor lent me a timing light so I know the timing is spot on. Probably just some kind of idle adjustment needed to bring it up from 500 to 750 rpm.

Thanks all to replied to my posts and helped me get my car running again.