82 gsl 1+ years sitting, no start
 

Alright, so I picked up an 82 GSL. It's got a 12a that looks stock, stock carb, exhaust everything. So far I've charged the battery, put in fresh gas (Old tank was dry or very nearly), replaced both coils, and made sure I've got spark at all 4 plugs when cranking. It won't start.

I pulled all plugs, and I hear a typical whoosh noise on both housings, so I think I have at least some compression. I can see fresh gas come out of the accelerator squirters(? not sure what they're called on this carb), when i press the gas, so I know I've got fresh fuel.

I hooked up my timing light, and put it on L1, and set the timing so that it's firing on the first mark on the crank pulley. I'm no sure this is right at all though. I forgot to disconnect the vacuum advance though!

I'm thinking since I have fuel, air and spark, but no start, the timing must be far off? I'm kinda new to these engines, so forgive the noobishness. Thanks!

Ok so far I've removed the belts and pulleys on the front of the engine, which allowed me to get to the eccentric shaft pulley. I pulled it off, and then rotated the e-shaft so that it's at roughly 9 o clock facing the front of the engine. I then lined up the first timing mark (Supposed to be yellow?) with the pointer on the front cover and screwed the pulley back on.

I then reinstalled the alternator belt, and put the distributor back in too. When aligning the distributor, I made sure that the dimple on the gear and the mark on the casting were aligned.

Then I went through and put the igniter with with the blue striped yellow wire to the coil that feeds the leading plugs. I think the igniter YL wire goes to the coil negative and the Black with white stripe the positive, right? I then did the same for the trailing igniter, the one towards the passenger side, right. The YG wire went tot he negative terminal on the coil and the Black and white one to the positive, with the lead from the coil feeding the trailing plugs on the distributor. Unfortunately the Wiring diagram I have doesn't make clear which side of the coil the wires are supposed to go to, nor which igniter is leading and which trailing.

Now when I go to start the car, I'm sure I'm getting fresh fuel, I pulled the line and checked when the pump was running. The car won't start, but it will make some pretty cool fires in the carb. To me this says that the timing is still off, and it's firing on the wrong stroke/rotor position?

It looks like when it catches fire/explodes that there's some sort of mess coming out of the carb. How hard is it to pull the carb? I wonder if some animal got down in there? Car was in a field for a year.

Thanks for the help!

The method you used to align the timing is not correct. Do/did you have the rivet hole in the e-shaft pulley? If you do that is the easiest for this year. If not then trey to see if the timing is on with a light. If it's not correct then you have a couple of options. You could rotate it one bolt hole till the timing is correct or do the rear flywheel method. Search and you can find the later method.

Unfortunately it's a very late (12/81) model, so no rivet in the pulley. I have searched adn from what I seem to be reading, the flywheel inspection plate is on the Passenger Side of the engine, just behind the exhaust manifold? It looks 90% impossible to get to on this car with the manifolds+carburetor+cruise control in the way? Now on to of the engine it looks like there's another plate, is that the right one to look at?

I do have another pulley, likely from an 80/79 car that has the rivet in it, could I simply swap that pulley onto my e-shaft to get the correct timing? Will pulling the sleeve thing that the current pulley is bolted to release the Torrington bearings?

Oh and so do I have the coils and distributor figured out right?

Thanks!

That other pulley would only work if the e-shaft hub has the hole for the rivet like the pulley does. DO NOT remove the e-shaft hub. That's just asking for big problems at this point.

There is also a trans inspection plate on the top of the motor. Still not the easiest to get to but easier then the side one.

OK glad I didn't remove the hub.

So basically, I'll pull the inspection port on top of the motor, find the flat spot on the flywheeol, and then rotate it 90 degrees so that the flat spot would be lined up with the inspection plate on the side of the motor, right? Then go set the timing pulley to the correct location.

Just moving the pulley from one orientation to another didn't do anything to correct the issue. It had not effect on getting it to run. If you have fuel and spark then my guess is a big vacuum leak or maybe a misaligned dizzy.

Hopefully you marked the original orientation of the timing pulley before you started making changes.

Have you removed the distributor to ensure it's stabbed correctly? If you haven't then do that first. Set the pulley to one of the marks and do NOT rotate the motor. Next, ensure the dizzy is stabbed correctly.

Well I think in spite of myself I got it figured out. I simply went in a clockwise pattern, moving the pulley 90 degrees each time. Then I took out the distributor, lined up the marks on it, and set the timing to 0 on the pointer. So yeah I reset the distributor each time I moved the pulley 90 degrees. The original timing was way off apparently, as I've ended up moving the pulley 270 degrees clockwise from the original point when I bought the car.

So I'm getting little puffs of smoke and it feel like it's trying to start. Unfortunately I just noticed a bunch of what looks like grass, feathers and fluffy crap coming out of the exhaust. I think I'll unhook the exhaust from the manifold back and see if it'll start.

Seriously, thanks for the help though!

OK so I realized I've been barking up the wrong tree this whole time. I should have simply checked the compression first! The rear rotor has pretty much 0 compression, and I see a chunk missing in the Apex seal...So it's time to put together the spare engine, yay! Going to start a new thread to detail the process and ask some q's/

Feathers?..
One of my S5's ate a mouse..!..Found mouse parts in the housing!