Hello,
I have messed up my timing and I don't understand why.
Since I received my 860, it always ran rough above 1500 RPMs and the timing advance seems to be operational so I decided to check the timing. When I set the flywheel to 4 degrees, the rotor was pointing at the wire leading to cylinder #4 (closest to the steering wheel), not cylinder #1 (closest to the radiator). When I removed the spark plug from cylinder #1 (closest to the radiator), the piston looked like it was almost all the way up so everything seemed to be making sense.
Instead of just changing the position of the wires on the distributor cap, I decided to make the firing order match the cap. When installed on the distributor, the left most terminal on the cap has a "1" stamped beside it so, to avoid future confusion, I wanted the #1 cylinder to be plugged into the #1 terminal on the cap. I removed the distributor and repositioned the rotor so it was pointing at the #1 terminal on the cap. I then attached the wires in the 1-2-4-3 firing order.
Now the tractor won't start and gives an occasional "burp" from the carburetor. This "burping" caused some gas to spray out past the air cleaner hose, on to the starter. After reading many posts on here about setting static timing, it seemed pretty straight forward to me but I obviously misunderstood something. I know the timing is way off now but I don't understand why, what did I do wrong? Thanks.
-Mike
I have messed up my timing and I don't understand why.
Since I received my 860, it always ran rough above 1500 RPMs and the timing advance seems to be operational so I decided to check the timing. When I set the flywheel to 4 degrees, the rotor was pointing at the wire leading to cylinder #4 (closest to the steering wheel), not cylinder #1 (closest to the radiator). When I removed the spark plug from cylinder #1 (closest to the radiator), the piston looked like it was almost all the way up so everything seemed to be making sense.
Instead of just changing the position of the wires on the distributor cap, I decided to make the firing order match the cap. When installed on the distributor, the left most terminal on the cap has a "1" stamped beside it so, to avoid future confusion, I wanted the #1 cylinder to be plugged into the #1 terminal on the cap. I removed the distributor and repositioned the rotor so it was pointing at the #1 terminal on the cap. I then attached the wires in the 1-2-4-3 firing order.
Now the tractor won't start and gives an occasional "burp" from the carburetor. This "burping" caused some gas to spray out past the air cleaner hose, on to the starter. After reading many posts on here about setting static timing, it seemed pretty straight forward to me but I obviously misunderstood something. I know the timing is way off now but I don't understand why, what did I do wrong? Thanks.
-Mike