Unable to start after distributor removal

Car has been idling rough lately, not firing on all cylinders when cold. I've ordered a powerspark kit for the dist, but thought I'd try replacing the condenser first so removed the dist . Now it won't start!! Fires roughly for a few seconds at best then dies out. I've cranked the engine to TDC, verifying it by both the pulley/flywheel marks and looking at the cam. I managed to wipe off the tdc mark I made on the dist and block, but the rotor is pointing to no1 lead so it should be able to fire up??

The distributor shaft had a lot of up/down play, maybe 5mm. Is this normal? No side to side play though.



 

Hi goldie, it's been a few days so you may have sorted it now. Are you sure you're at TDC on compression stroke(valves closed). I take it you have points. Have you messed with them? Have you messed with firing order? How are you setting your static timing? Also are you sure the distributor is seated correctly because I think it drives the oil pump.

Never use the pulleys to align the diz.
Use the has mark stamped on the side frame of the diz housing.

Manually set it to 0tdc.  Then Spin the intermediate shaft to rotate the diz to 0 time as the center of the rotor is at the middle of the hash.  

If you re-time your engine to 0, at the crank finger is the dimple on the back of the cam at the plane of the engine head or even with the valve cover tin, and the rotor is in the middle of the hash.  The rotor is then at number one Cylinder, to the rest of the wires are in order 1342

Thanks for the tips guys. I did get it to idle but timing was all over the place, impossible to set it with my light. I received the Powerspark kit today, and when removing the points I discovered it was bent and not making proper contact, it was probably way off.

Anyway, now I’m not quite sure about the wiring for the powerspark. Red powerspark wire goes to coil live with 12V , but I have a resistor wire along with live to the coil which gave around 8v ign on. Will I fry the coil if I bin this? Another thing, the instructions says no other wires should be connected to the negative side of the coil apart from the powerspark/dist, but there’s another red/black wire (upper) also attached to coil which I am not sure leads to. Anyone know the proper way to set it up?




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And now it works!! Fed a fresh ignition 12v to the Powerspark instead of from the coil, timing is now dead on!! Time to fine tune the Weber

Hi goldie red/Black is probably the tachometer.Try disconnecting it see if tachometer stops working. Does the black on +ve side go to starter solenoid, if so the live will have a ballast resistor. The coil will get 12v when starting and 8 volts when running. So you need to connect your + from igniter to a 12v ingnition live.

Never mind just seen your post LoL, glad you got it sorted.

I also ran a feed direct from the fuse box to power the electronic ignition, the hardest bit was finding power that still worked when cranking the car on the starter motor as some of them don't work when cranking the engine…

Well worth binning the points and condenser in favor for those electric ignition system. I used a Accuspark in my 1978 Mk1 Scirocco.

Here's the b*****!! (fitted by previous owner) I now finally know what the car is supposed to feel/sound like.. Electronic ftw

Gee I thought that the points were supposed to be directly parallel to each other….

I don't know how I could of been doing it wrong for all those years .

The quality of points and condseners have gone down hill over the last few years and finding branded names is getting harder to find that is why I changed to electronic ignition.

I ran points etc for many years with out any problems as long as you have dwell meter and check the gap every 6 months they are ok, the problem comes at higher revs as points can bounce when opening and closing fast and you don't get a clean spark.

Well worth the £30 ish for a electronic ignition kit, I've had my Accuspark for about 3 years and they are still going strong.