Flooded Engine...easily

[CMB]

Thanks David that is exactly the kind of stuff I am looking for. This is my first Tercel, so it is nice to learn about those potentially catastrophic known weak points from others, rather than learning about it the hard way. The nice thing about this car is that it is a lifetime resident of the Willamette Valley, OR where metal doesn't rust and rubber lives forever. So maybe mine are OK, I will check them out though to be safe.

[xirdneh]

not seating properly. Also, the old needle seat had a filter built in to the inlet side, the Napa rebuild lit seat does not have filter. This is making me worry about debris blocking the needle valve from closing.

that filter will come off the old inlet
it will twist off by hand most of the time
carefull use of pliers will do it too

[CMB]

Thanks Xirdneh. I will have to see if I can get that filter off. I think I will go ahead and replace the float at some point in the near future too. It runs great now, but what chico was saying about foam floats has me thinking the $30 for a new float is worth the piece of mind. I have a brass float from a 85 2f landcruiser maybe that will swap.

Last night I pulled the distributor. Pretty clean and dry inside there, so the mechanical advance was fine, I sprayed some silicone on pivot points anyway. The vacuum advance is not working, but I did notice that if I applied vacuum to the bottom of the diaphragm I got spark advance. So I disconnected the HAC valve hose and attached both the vacuum advance lines via a T to the HAC nipple on the diaphragm. It advances just fine now. The HAC is disabled, but that is no problem where in Portland. I will dirve it this way for a while and see how it goes. Might end up replacing the vac advance diaphragms anyway.

I will be ordering Toyota Cap, rotor and wires today....for $115! I think it will be worth it to have OEM parts on the distributor rather than the Chinese crap on there now.

Also, I was happy to see the timing belt was a Toyota part and it looked to be in pretty good shape, though I am not an expert.

[ARCHINSTL]

If what you are ordering is just the cap, rotor, and cables - Butler has the three for just less than $99.
Tom M.

[CMB]

Well, the project has been on hold until this weekend. It also grew to include valve adjustment. I ordered a non-oem vac advance for about $64. The nipples for vac hose face the wrong way, but I made it work. One thing I noticed is that the distributor has a fair amount of play in the shaft, which translates to an air gap that varies. I think I will keep my eyes out for low mileage used distributor, and swap vac advance, new cap, rotor and wires...at some point.

Runs pretty good now. I think I need to take a closer look at motor mounts next and come up with some home made version of the engine dampener as some have done on here. That should take care of the vibration at idle.

I am curious are Denso brand plug wires OEM. The brand I got from parts geek are Denso, not Nippendenso. They appear to be high quality.

Also, why not adjust timing to 5 Degrees BTDC, per FSM?

[CMB]

Her is picture illustrating the vac advance nipples facing opposite of OEM part.

IMG_4811.JPG

Two pictures illustrating the min and max air gap resulting from wobble in rotor shaft.

IMG_4804.JPG

IMG_4805.JPG

[dlb]

advancing the timing to 10* BTDC gives the engine more responsiveness, better fuel economy, and makes it run cooler. i don't know about the wobble in the rotor shaft, someone else will have to head that up.

[Petros]

Denso is the factory supplier I beleive. The end of the dist shaft is held in place with a bearing built into the head behind the gear, so it should not wobble much when it is installed, but that looks like a lot of play to me. I would replace the distrib when you get a chance, should be no detectable wobble.

good luck with it.

[CMB]

Thanks Petros. That is what the FSm suggests..just replace the distributor. I wonder if that bearing can be replaced? It looks like t would require the removal and replacement of the driven gear on the end of the shaft too, so maybe not worth it. I have a feeling any other high mile junkyard distributor will have the some wear and wobble. I will look around.

[takza]

I've been running a dist with that kind of slop for 70K miles with no issues (though I did have the coil go bad)...and I have a 160K spare with about the same amount. Just don't adjust it too close? This is not like the old points adjustment where the gap is real important as far as timing...this gap just needs to create an on/off signal?

As Click and Clack would say...doan worry bout it? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha