Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
My next contact with FAST tech support wasn't as productive as I'd hoped. Prior to calling them I wasn't able to get the car to start but I thought the information we'd gathered the previous time would help.
I knew that our timing light was showing 43' BTDC when the computer said it was set to be 9' BTDC. My question was where to go from there.
I didn't get the same technician that we talked to before. This one gave quick dismissive answers that made it seem he was eager to get off the phone. I explained to him the difficulty getting the car to run and the difference in timing readings between the timing light & the computer. I asked for the correct procedure to sync the two. His initial answer was to rotate the distributor until the two matched. His response confused me because it seemed that it would totally screw with the rotor phasing we'd done. I could understand minor adjustments but not a 34' adjustment. So I asked him if it would cause problems and what the maximum adjustment could be before it messed up phasing. His answer then was that we shouldn't go beyond 5' to 10'. I re-stated the amount we were off and asked again what to do. He then said we needed to start over and phase the distributor again because we must not have it correct. He said he had no further advice so I got off the phone.
I know we'd re-checked the phasing several times. Unless we misinterpreted the instructions I'd most likely be setting it up in the same position we already did before. I'll hit the manual and see if there is another way to decipher it that would bring us further into sync. We had FAST talk us through the procedure once before and they had us set it up exactly the same way we had done by ourselves. That is the original reason we made certain our harmonic balancer was marked correctly and verified TDC.
If I can't figure out some new interpretation of the instructions, I'll try to set it up with a target that has 34' less advance and see if it works.