1979 VW B1 Passat Estate - Ready for MOT

It stopped raining tonight for long enough for me to have another play about under the bonnet.

I checked every individual spark plug again with it's corresponding HT lead and all was fine - except one. Tested another spark plug on it and nothing. Ran a volt test through it with a multimeter; it's gone the way of the dodos. This is sort of good as it helps narrow one more thing down! I'm gonna bite the bullet and buy a new set. Gulp at 40+ pounds for some tiny wires though! Will keep the 'still working' ones as spares.

Could the above, i.e. a single spark not firing, be the cause of a no-start? I tried with Easy Start too while bumped up to my running fiesta.

I also managed to find TDC on my crank pulley - was a nightmare as it was fully crusted over and had to clean almost the whole thing in an awkward position. I also noticed there is a mark on my dizzy which I thought, when the crank pulley is TDC, the rotor arm on the dizzy pointed to it's own mark? I almost looked like it was 180 degrees out but couldn't say exactly, was just pointing nowhere near the mark for sure! Dare I say it - is this because of the rotation ratio, i.e. crank pulley rotates fully 2 times for everyone distributor rotor arm? Hence I should hand crank the pulley 1 full rotation to get the to line up?

This is very confusing for someone who can't even change a tyre! Very interesting though!

Thanks

As the 4 stroke engine fires each cylinder every other stroke the distributor as you say runs at half crank speed, therefore at the crank tdc point the distributor can be firing on either cylinder 1 or 4, on a 4 cyl engine, you need to look at the distributor cap and see which lead the rotor arm is pointing to, if you think you have mixed them up then you need to remove the cam cover and check on which cylinder the valves are both closed.

Ok great responses thanks. So just to clarify. It doesn't matter if I turn the crank clockwise or anti-clockwise; the rotor arm will only ever turn one way? Is so I should easily be able to sort this particular problem out. Obviously I aligned position 1 on the dizzy cap with piston 1, then the second with 3 etc (firing seq is 1-3-4-2), but this will be doing a fat load of good if it's all 180 degrees out plus a dodgy ht lead.

Ordered some new Bosch leads tonight. Will check, again, tomorrow for the TDC on crank and dizzy.

Thanks for keeping with this thread! Annoying I know!

Also, this is my workspace...

What the buggering heck? So I ordered some ht leads last night from onlinecarparts.co.uk. Got an email this morning asking me to ring them and confirm my order. Baring in mind all this information went into their online system, they wanted my billing address, delivery address, delivery contact, WORK address, card details again, and a copy of either my driving licence or passport. What the hell?

This sounds suspicious as hell, told the clearly Asian woman on the phone I didn't have some of the info so would call back. Tempted to cancel the order, shouldn't have to go through the Spanish inquisition to buy some flipping car parts!

Order cancelled (hopefully) and bank informed. Luckily my credit card is due payment so there's almost nothing on it if some suspicious activity is attempted in the next few days. Bank should notice now too. Ordered some more HT leads from rexbo who have been good before.

Thanks!

No it won't - first of all the marks line up twice in every spark cycle so, depending on whether the spot you have it now is the point in the cycle where the spark happens, the dizzy could be 180 degrees away. More to the point, engines almost never spark at TDC usually 10 or more degrees before so that the spark is well and truly lit by the time the piston completes its compression stroke. So, the distrubuter is almost certainly correct. In fact, distributers almost never "fall out" of alignment. I would suggest you not adjust it a all, get the new leads, install them properly, get fresh gas and properly gapped plugs, a new battery and I suspect it will start.

Hi, sounds like good progress is being made. I've only skimmed through the posts but haven't seen it mentioned how to definitely find TDC so I'll document some steps I generally use here which may help:

1. Remove spark plug number 1 - nearest to cam pulley.
2. Insert long thin screw driver, long allen key or similar down plug hole until you feel it touch the piston. Make sure to use something with a handle that can't just drop in the plug hole and disappear!
3. Using a spanner on crank pulley, rotate engine and watch screw driver rise and fall with piston movement. Note point it reaches it's highest lift and then start to fall. It will take a bit of to and fro action to get it to the exact top point. This is TDC.
4. Check mark on crank pulley is aligned to arrow on the block. It should be.
5. Check cam pulley mark (VWs often have a tiny indented circle mark stamped on the inside pulley edge that lines up with a mark on the cam cover) is aligned to where it should be. That means timing belt is fitted properly, top and bottom of the engine are in sync.
6. Remove dizzy cap, check rotor arm is pointing to a little nick / indent in the outer casing. You might have to feel for it with a finger nail, they aren't easy to see. That rotor arm position corresponds to plug lead 1 being active and confirms base / static ignition timing is correct. Don't worry if it isn't spot on to the centre of the rotor arm so long as it's within a few mm either way at this point, that will probably be intentional to set the ignition timing correctly.

Hope that helps?

Stu

EDIT: This pic may help, found via google on VWVortex.

As mentioned given the cars history of running and then laid up there is no real reason to suspect the timing is way off at this stage.
However you could just check the dizzy is nipped up tight though.I remember working on an old Kent engine where someone hadn't tightened it up properly and i felt the dizzzy move while i was fitting points and fiddling about.Timing was a mile out,partly because it had moved while i was working on it and it had no doubt moved a bit with engine vibration previously too.

In the diagram, if you start from number one cylinder. the firing sequence is correct at 1342. However I can't tell from the photos which point on distributor cap is for the number one cylinder. But so long as you correctly identify this and then follow your pattern. The firing order should be spot on. ( I hope that makes sense)

And about the rotor arm not matching the the timing marks on distributor body. You can actually move the distributor body with out moving the rotor arm.
The body is usually clamped down by a screw.
Set all your timing marks again, lining up the cam and crank markings.
If the rotor arm is still 40ish degrees out from the marking as you say, turn the body till the markings line up. This should get you timing set up well enough for the car to run. It can be fine tuned with a timing gun later if needs be.

It's been a while since I've done this, so if I've given wrong advice, I apologise and feel free to correct me