Borrego

HELP! I have a 1985 22r. I was driving down the trail, and all of a sudden lost all power, the truck completely shut down. I put it on the flatbed and took it home. I looked at the distributor and the rotor was destroyed and parts were melted to the cap! I've never seen this before. I cleaned everything out, replaced the pick/up coil/magnet, set the air gap at .3, replaced the rotor and cap, put all new wires and plugs in it, and attempted to start it up. It wouldn't start. I wasn't getting spark. So I checked my coil, and it tested out of spec, so I replaced it. Still nothing. So I bought a used ignitor, and it fired up, but it ran like crap and wouldn't idle unless I kept it floored. I figured the timing was off, which is strange because it ran perfect before all this happened. The only way I could get it to idle was to advance the timing about 15 degrees. (timing mark on harmonic balancer was 15 degrees to the right of the 0 mark). I thought, maybe I skipped a tooth on the timing chain. So I pulled the valve cover, and aligned everything to TDC. To do this, I rotated the motor so the bottom was lined up at 0 (12 o'clock), and the cam dowel was at 12 o'clock with the dimple sitting about 11:45. The rotor lined right up with the #1, and I pulled the #1 plug just to be sure the piston was at TDC. Everything looks to be aligned, which leads me to think my chain is fine. Also, the guides look good when I look down from the top, and I've never heard any slapping from the chain, so I don't think the timing chain jumped a tooth. next step was I bought a rebuilt distributor from NAPA. I put it in, and nothing.. no spark or anything. So, I pulled it out, and put the old one back in. I got spark, but it again ran like crap... so the new distributor was crap. I pulled the pickup coil and magnet out of the old distributor (because it was new), and replaced it in the new (rebuilt NAPA) distributor. it started and I got spark, but it still ran like crap. Same as the old distributor. It idles fine, but only when I have it 15 degrees advanced, and if I try to drive it, it backfires through the carb and tries to die whenever I push on the gas. I had to engage the crawl box and put it in low 4 (two cases), just to get it off the trailer and into the garage on a flat driveway... I also tried moving the distributor up and down a gear notch to see if it changed anything, one way it idled much higher, but timing was way off, and the other way it wouldn't even start.

I'm at a complete loss... Any suggestions?
Thanks...

Borrego

Figured it out just in case someone else runs into this problem... Two issues. The distributor, even though it was "rebuilt" from Napa, had a bad signal generator. We replaced it with another signal generator and found it to be faulty as well. So we replaced the entire distributor with ANOTHER "rebuilt" distributor from Napa, and tested it at the counter and it tested faulty as well. Finally got one that was good and put it in. We also found that the green plug from the igniter that plugs into the distributor had frayed and exposed wires on the inside and the wires were touching. Replaced them. Between the two fixes, it fired right up and timed perfectly.

Lons81

iTrader: (2)

Sorry you had to through all that troubleshooting, but you sharing it will help someone in the future. I had problems similar as the two wires to the dizzy was shorting out to the dipstick then to the power steering mount bracket