Hello and thank your in advance for your help.

I put a newer motor in my Brother-in-laws 4Runner and Timed it. He went to Smog it here in CA. and all of the emissions passed, but it failed due to the timing marks jumping around on the balancer. I changed the balancer, still did the same thing, so I pulled off the timing cover and redid the timing chain (set the #1 @ TDC, put the balancer on 0, lined up the timing marks on the cam gear and crank, put the marked links on the marks on the gears with the cam being at around 1150 or so). Same problem after I got it back together. He went and got a new distributor, same thing again. Tested the TPS, it was out of wack so got a new one, put it together with the TSM specs, and still the same problem. Tonight I swapped out my knock sensor just to rule that out and same thing (If I set the timing at 5 degrees there is a line at 8 and 2 degrees, and yes I shorted out the E1 and TE terminals everytime). I checked all of the vac lines and all of the connections, but still the timing is jumping around. The motor runs like a stripped ape, and none of this is making sense to me. Compression is good too. Anybody have any ideas, or has anybody seen anything like this happen before? I feel like I am married to this, and I am out of Ideas.

Once again thank you in advance for your help with this, any input it appreciated.

 

My timing mark jumps around a little bit, I got a video of it. I passed smog with flying colors.

Here is a video I took of it. I spun the distributor so you can see the timing mark in the video jumping around at about 10 o'clock

When I took this video my motor had under 5000 miles on it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u-m3a-Njdk[/youtube] (ignore the sputtering, its unrelated)

 

I guess that the smog guy that they took it to was part of the Third Reich, because he said that is the reason that it didn't pass...I am just dumbfounded...Thanks for the video....

 

I got my truck smogged at the Toyota dealership, I never saw them use a timing light, I passed in about 5 minutes.

 

It passed today....thank goodness...freeking balancer spun 180, put a new on on and there she be....Thanks for all of the ideas..

 

I know this was posted 4 years ago. But im having the same problem. In the beginning of your post sounded like you said you put a good or new balancer on the motor. And then you say you replaced it with a new one and that fixed the problem at the end of the posts. Idk what to do. I set the timing chain on it and its good i checked the top gear with the balance on 0 tdc. And its all good. Changed the distributor and still same thing. Im thinking that balancer is out of wack. But it checked good when i set everything. Did you do the timing chain on this when you did it? And if so did yoy check the top gear with the balancer on and at 0 at tdc? Any help you be greatly appreciated