83 Carter-weber GL won't start

[benebob]

Went to help out Subieman90 yesterday with his new GL. IT IS GORGEOUS!!! He had the coil go and take out the disto as well. It now has a 4wd auto disto in it (its a 5 speed fwd). It has spark, it has gas but won't start. It almost wants to catch at the end of the starter motor running but doesn't. I'm not familar at all with the C-W but the only thing I can see is that the butterfly choke doesn't shut very far to start it. Can manually shut it all the way but don't know if it should be shut or not. It was 100 degrees here yesterday so my guess is it should've at least fired up. Even nothing when shooting carb cleaner or gas down there.

 

My thought is his distributor is in 180 off but when I replaced my brats a few years back it would still run at 180 although poorly. Neither of us have a timing light and I try to stay away from such things as much as possible b/c I just don't understand it all but is there a good way to check if this is the issue w/o a light and to get it where it needs to be w/o removing the valve cover as again that's an area I don't really understand if I'm where I should be or not. Thanks for the expert advise! Once we can get it up and running he'll take her to a mechanic to have the timing figured out but doesn't wanna pay if it isn't the problem... All the fuses, and links are fine, anything else it might be as it has spark, it has gas, it only has 53k on it so compression should be just fine.

[hooziewhatsit]

my initial thought, not knowing anything about carbs, is that the disty is probably off.

 

To check, you can either insert a finger, most of spark plug, etc, into cylinder 1 and crank until you feel the compression stroke. Then put it at TDC and see where the rotor points. It should point to cylinder #1.

 

however, from the FSM, if you don't have long enough fingers to check for the compression stroke on cyl. 1,

 

take off the passenger side t-belt cover (if it isn't off already)

 

Line up 0* TDC on the flywheel while the dot on the cam points to 315* (North-West) It will either point NW, or SE, you don't want it to point SE.

 

Now adjust the disty so that it's pointing at the #1 sparkplug wire.

 

That should get it close enough in time that it will start.

 

This will only work if the belts are installed correctly, which I'm guessing they are, since they haven't been changed.

 

good luck

[karinvail]

 

take off the passenger side t-belt cover (if it isn't off already)

 

Line up 0* TDC on the flywheel while the dot on the cam points to 315* (North-West) It will either point NW, or SE, you don't want it to point SE.

 

Now adjust the disty so that it's pointing at the #1 sparkplug wire.

 

That should get it close enough in time that it will start.

 

This will only work if the belts are installed correctly, which I'm guessing they are, since they haven't been changed.

 

good luck

 

I thought EA81's didn't have timing belts.......

[hooziewhatsit]

I thought EA81's didn't have timing belts.......

 

hehehe... details :-p that's what I get for posting before I truly wake up, lol

 

I'd still be suspicious that the distributor was installed incorrectly.

 

I also don't believe you can use a timing light if it isn't running. (I could be wrong?)

[subeman90]

Well i finally got it running tonight. I got some advise from my garageman which is pretty much what was said here about compression and fingers etc. Basically I put it in right but the previous owner must have really did a fudge job on it because he had it off 90*. Basically when it was supposed to be at #1 it was at the next one (3maybe)

 

So I would personally like to thank everyone who either by computer helped with this or showed up and crawled around my tight dirty garage (Ben).

 

Hopefully soon I can get to the shop to have a light put to it and have it fine tuned to run in all its 52k glory!

 

thanks again everyone!