can you put your distributor in the wrong way? the distributor was in my car when i bought it but i noticed when i put the distributor cap on it the one on it for the number one spark plug instead of being at top left it was at bottom right on the distributor. i know the cap can only go on one way. then i made a trip back out to the parts store and had the guy get me another distributor cap thinkin he messed up and he returned with another brand but it did the same thing.

 

yes. but the timing would be 180 out.

 

so if that happend it wouldn't be hard to fix just rotate your firing order 180 right. instead of 1342 it would be 4213?

 

something like that....take out the dist, and rotate 180 degrees... then use a timing light after you get it started.. it makes a world of difference

 

^what he said

 

yeah i'm starting to think that's what's been wrong with my car all along but for good measure i'm going to go ahead and replace the timing chain all together. the car has 220k on it and the timing chain has probably never been replaced. i've been pretty sure all along that it was a timing issue of some kind. this just further backs my suspicion.

 

well it gets even better. today i got the number one piston to tdc just to test out the 180 degree out of wack idea and when i removed the distributor cap the rotor was pointing where it was supposed to be top left. i don't know if fixing the timing chain doesn't help it looks like i'll be getting my sr done a little sooner then planed.