1) Check your mechanical advance in the distributor. If it's loose with light spring tension timing will be hard to chase. The idle will be choppier than it should be but not overly erratic. Kind of sounds like a beefy cam. I've also had problems with budget timing lights (not professional grade) and heavy ignition wire only intermittently picking up signal. You can try wiggling the connection on cyl. 1 wire.

2) Try revving it up 2-3500k. Could be an exciter circuit issue. I believe it runs through the charge/brake lights. Seems like a common issue with these. Mine won't excite until 2200ish RPM. Then it stays excited. That sounded dirty.

3) I believe you want the tach to read from the negative terminal of the coil. So, green wire to negative output on the coil. If the test line hooks up to that, assuming your power/grounds are good, you should be in business. Just a standard 4 wire tach, right?

4) brakes can be deceptively hard to bleed when they've been 100% dry. I haven't really had to dig into the braking system on these trucks yet but most have some kind of force regulator on the rear. Depends how the system is routed.

 

Thanks for the input Jimby! I didn't do any trouble shooting on the distributor yet, but it is a newer unit and worked well when I took everything apart. When the timing is jumping all over the place the engine is still running well - not lopey or anything, just nice and smooth. That leads me to believe that maybe my timing light is taking a dump on me. The charge light doesn't bother me as much because I know it is charging and my voltage is good; it's just that bright ass light on my dash that pisses me off. I read somewhere that the e-brake light is wired into that circuit with the charge relay as a some sort of warning measure so maybe if I hook up my parking brake it may solve the problem. As for the tach, I'm hoping that is a bad ground since it is a really PITA to unmount my gauge pod! It's your standard 4-wire tach but I have it grounded with something else so maybe that is the culprit. And I know what you are saying about the brakes - I vacuum pumped them to bleed them originally, but I may just go at it the old fasion way with somebody pumping the pedal. I was more or less hoping somebody woukd chime in with some rear disc brake conversion issue solution that I may have over looked.

 

Most timing lights I've had are pretty cheap. The connections seem to fail on them.

The brake light and charge light work together to provide resistance on that circuit. If the brake bulb is bad it will probably make the charge light stay on.

 

On my trailblazer I had a loose wire on the emergency brake switch and when it was acting up it would put on both my charge light and my brake light. Even though I had charge and the brake was not applied. So cool seeing that run. Way too go bud!

 

On my truck I had a new master cyl, lines, front calipers, etc all new with rear disc swap and all, it took a bit of test drives for the pedal to set it correctly, I must have went through 2L of brake fluid bleeding the system but I still was getting a soft pedal, it settled it self after the 2nd or 3rd drive. I do have residual valves though, and a manual proportioning valve. Awesome to see it run dave, what a great moment, congrats!

 

Great sounding to go along with the looks

 

new brake master ? .. I cant remember reading this , but if it is , did you bench blead it before installing ? ... as above , you may need to run a few pints if you didn't . Distributor , in my experience , bouncing timing has let sometimes to worn distributor bushings as well .. maybe check that out ..

sounds great though .. gotta feel good



.

 

Fixed the charge light issue by plugging in the e-brake - that was a pretty stupid reason for a charge light to come on... Fixed my timig issue which wasn't a timing issue at all - my timing light had a bunch of metal dust on the inductive clamp from laying around the garage so it was interfering with the signal. Cleaned it off, set the timing, check the advance, adjusted the carb and it's purring like a kitten! I still can't figure out the tach issue but I'll deal with that later.

When I was driving it, The brakes seem to be working just. Perhaps I'm just used to my Tundra brakes so these just don't feel the same. They definitely stop though. Do you guys like how I just casually threw in the fact that I was driving it today?? It drove WAAYYYY BETTER than it did before!! Suspension has a good feel to it, it tracks straight down the road, steers well and no unusual noises. i literally don't think I have any drivetrain adjustments to make at this point. The only problem that I noticed is that my header was slightly rattling against my frame (where I fixed the rust rot) but that is an easy fix.

I ended up having two fluid leaks out of the whole deal - one was a fuel fitting that wasn't quite tight enough and the other is where the heater hose goes into the driver side of the heater core. It is likely slightly out of round so the clamp isn't working properly. Should be another easy fix. But only those two leaks out of all new plumbing throughout the truck - I will take those two leaks ANYTIME over something else!

Didn't get to give my son a ride for his birthday today, but I promised him I would tomorrow as long as it is not wet out. He'll be in heaven!

 

Took my son for a ride yesterday. He loved it!


Here's a little video of the drive. The sound quality sucks - makes it sound a lot louder than what it truly is:

 

Nice Stop sign treatment.. haha

Loving it!! Your truck and work are seriously an inspiration.

 

For some reason I can't play video on my phone. Will try on computer later. Great job on getting it back on the road. I hope someday I have the great feeling I'm sure your having driving it again. I checked my truck and am going to need the ashtray and pocket. I don't plan on using the radio though if u want it. I could text you pics of it. Oh and your son looks right at home in his seat. When you going to start building one for him, lol ?

 

Thanks for the offer twink, but I think that I am going to go with a RetroSound radio that fits in the stock location. They are pretty slick modern version of the original look. I think my son will likely benefit from my next project which will be a FJ45. I just need to find one that is solid enough to start building up.

I finished making the truck "legal" this week. Installed some LED tag bolts that I got from a local motorcycle shop. Since I have the fiberglass bed, I don't have that little lip in the rollpan that hides the factory tag lights so I wanted to go with something a little more sleek and less noticeable, but I didn't want to use some of the cheap lights that are readily available from local parts stores. I think they look a little brighter than most car tag lights so that should keep the police from complaining.

Look, you can't even tell they are there:


The boom! There they are!


Also finally got my driverside front turn signal - damn near impossible to find new aftermarket ones:

 

I also took it out today for a nice long spin with my son:










So far I've piled on about 200 trouble free miles. Only issue that I really need to work out is this pesky leak when the heater hose connects to the heater core. I've tried working out the dent in the copper pipe and even double clamped it, but it still leaks! Not much though, just enought to make a small puddle in the driver side floor pan after about 100 miles. I'll probably end up pulling the heater core and replacing the pipes.

I also think I need to figure out some thing with my brakes. They definitely stop the truck, but are SUPER touchy! I got my proportioning valve dialed in well, but I think that 1" bore MC might be a little much. Then again, I'm also used to the modern brakes of my Tundra and Camry. I'll do a little research on the topic.

Hopefully next weekend I'll finish wetsanding and polishing out the rest of the paint. Then I may call it quits for a little bit and just enjoy driving it for a while. I likely just do some odds and ins work here and there.

 

Oh, and I also got my tach working. Turns out that my tach was bad so I bought a new one and works like a charm. Too bad I bought the first one over a year ago so it is out of warranty - not to mention it isn't even made anymore.

 

Looking awesome! Now all you need is some mirrors! haha
Not sure if you are going with those big chrome ones.. I personally love the look of the small black plastic ones.

 

Already done! If you look in that last picture of my son you can see a little bit of it in the background

 

Oh ^ awesome!

 

I'm real happy for you Dave, great work! For the brakes, if you need reference we have a similar setup I think. I have stock booster, 1'' master cyl, v6 calipers up front on tacoma discs and buick calipers out back on stock front discs. Ceramic pads on all four corners. The pedal is definately hard and It needs a lot of force to lock the wheels, but I can't say I'm lacking brakes, if I had a dual booster it would probably be too much.

 

Is there something missing from the rear above the tires? Or am I just seeing a gap from the lift?

 

He doesn't have the mud guards on. Is that what you are talking about roark.