timing question

when you say "with the dist in the right spot" do you mean with the rotor pointing to the right spot? or the adjuster bolt lined up someplace in the middle? Did you remove the distributor and possibly you are off a tooth? On my '85 the cam gears have 3 holes and I have always used the middles. Sounds like maybe you are off a tooth on the dist. Did you make sure to have no. 1 at TDC when reinstalling the cam gears?

according to the chilton's manual i have the distributor matchmarked. with the notch on the gear on the distributor matched with it on the actual distributor. Yeah i'm tdc. the olny thing that i can think of is that i'm of on the cam gears.

Hmmm, I am not familiar with a method of match marking the dist on the 5MGE. Although I do see in my Chilton here that there are matchmarks, I have always used my Haynes and TSRM and I don't remember seeing this before. Anyhow, even with this procedure I know that the dist on the 5mge is really easy to skip a tooth when you insert it as it turns a lot. You might want to try a tooth either way before going through the tear down to get at the cam gears again. Just my opinion which may not be worth a whole heck of a lot

Screw all that chilton crap. It makes it harder than it is. Put the engine at TDC, mark the #1 distributor cap spot on the distributor, and put it in so that the rotor points to the #1 with the dist fully adjusted retarded.

Christian

Oh, and the center dowel is usually the one.