QuestionI wrote you a few days ago asking for some advice on 235 timing. Everything we talked about was exactly the things that I have been doing for the past few days. If you look back at my previous E-mail you will see that I have been throwing the kitchen sink at this motor trying to get it to run. The last thing you mentioned doing when we last spoke was to try a compression test. Since I can't get the engine to turn over the best compression I can get out of the engine is around the 40's. Is that good enough compression to get the engine to turn over? Working on cars is a hobby of mine so this isn't the first time I've ever set the timing on a car, but it is the first time I have ever been a total failure at it. This is something that I have done in minutes before and now I am spending hours and days on this thing going over the position of valves and pistons and flywheel and distributor and plug wires and spark and gas and cant even get it to stumble or run rough or anything. Could the answer to this be something weird like the plugs are sparking, but they are not sparking hot enough? Or the compression is too low? Or the 87 octane gas isn't good enough? Does the engine have to rotate at a certain speed to build up enough compression to create combustion? My ego is getting beaten up pretty bad here Mr. Benjamin, any advice you can ad to this would be greatly appreciated.
Answer40 PSI is very low, I doubt the engine would be able to pull the car with that low a compression reading. As to whether or not it would be possible to start it up and run it at fast idle, I'm not sure, but possibly you would be able to hear some feeble sign of life from it.
It is very possible that the timing chain has jumped a tooth - in fact now that I know the compression reading, I'd say that is the most likely cause.
The engine needs to be further diagnosed to learn what the problem is. If all the cylinders are that low, it is probably totally worn out. The cranking speed isn't that much of a factor in compression readings. If you want to check it with a faster cranking speed, you could run the starter on 12 volts - it won't hurt the starter if you don't keep it spinning for more than a few seconds at a time, which is all it takes to get a good compression reading. Also, make sure all the plugs are out when you do the compression test, and block the throttle and choke butterfly valves wide open. You can try adding an ounce of oil to each cylinder just before you put the compression tester in the hole - do this after you have tested it dry - the compression increase when you add oil tells you how much leakage is going past the rings, (as opposed to the valves) - it isn't going to fix anything, but it will tell you what he problem is (valves or rings).
I still haven't seen in any of your postings that you have gone through the exercise I suggested to make sure that the distributor is installed right - since you have a compression gauge, you can use it for the same purpose- crank the engine until you begin to see the needle come up on #1 cylinder and then stop and make sure the rotor is pointed at #1 spark plug wire. If you haven't yet done that, do it now and put that issue to bed for me, please?
The "hotness" of the spark is not an issue for starting the engine - that isn't your problem. If you see a spark jump at the plug end, it will run the engine - forget about your ignition system - the serious problem is elsewhere. I know you tried starting fluid also, so forget about fuel delivery. You might have problems there, but you have something more serious going on here.
Dick
