Misfiring 1985/86 RR V8

fett said:

its as siant said, should be rotor pointing to lead/plug no1 on cylinder one at tdc valves closed.

easy to just get it one tooth out as it slides round on the helical gear as you put it in.

do you know if its been out before car was laid up? it would explain a lot

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take the rocker cover off and the dizzy cap off and have a look and where its all pointing.

it needs to be spot on , if its a little bit out you may have just missed a tooth as you put the dizzy in (if you had it out, I cant remember lol)

what 3.5efi means is if you have turned the dizzy all the way round as far as it will go to try and time it and it still hasnt timed up with it round as far as it will you you are out of adjustment

so the engine is v8 carb and electronic ign . are both the carb's clean and set up properly , sound's like one of the needles is a bit slow , are dash pot's full of the correct oil . and are both needles ok and at same height ?

fett said:

take the rocker cover off and the dizzy cap off and have a look and where its all pointing.

it needs to be spot on , if its a little bit out you may have just missed a tooth as you put the dizzy in (if you had it out, I cant remember lol)

what 3.5efi means is if you have turned the dizzy all the way round as far as it will go to try and time it and it still hasnt timed up with it round as far as it will you you are out of adjustment

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i believe it to be one tooth out on distibutor. would explain leads being one out in cap because car will run with leads in both positions with distributor swung to either end of adjustment and run just about the same. i know cos i've tried it :doh: that will only make sense if you know what i mean

yup, if it wont rev and its got fuel its always timing as far as I can see

Do you have access to a stroboscopic timing light? If the engine will run at tickover, then a strobe on the crank timing markings will soon let you know whether the timing is out. You need to connect the strobe to No.1 plug and loosen the dizzy base plate clamp, you can then rotate the dizzy while the engine is running to get the timing right. If you can't adjust it sufficiently to get the timing right (dizzy gets to the end of its travel) then your dizzy is indeed a tooth out.

Folks - making considerable progress but still not sorted. Thanks for all the advice so far but....
Moved distributor round a least a couple of teeth and put the plug leads in the correct holes. Double checked position of rotor relative to TDC mark and fired her up. Runs but still fails under load unless I move the distributor round to the point where the letter 'F' on the pulley is aligned with the marker using my strobe !! Even then it's not 100% as revs are up near 900 and still misfires a little.
Do I need to move the distributor even further ?
Any other views on what may be wrong ?
Many thanks

The letter 'F' is from the BEFORE word on the pulley !!

its obviously a timing issue, go back to square one as described and put the dizzy in the right place.