Basic question about dist. cap and rotor

[Dream240]

Originally Posted by surreybc

Must have been flooded because it now works perfectly where it didnt work at all before. exact same setting with nothing touched. worked fine on at least half the tooth. i guess just running it with bad timing can flood it.
if i had just pulled dist. out and not moved anything i think i would be fine. all my marks were exactly the same the first time i tried with broken dist. cap. the dist. gear rotates coming out but rotates the same amount in opposite direction going in.

never flooded car before this.

A piece of advice. Whenever you are pulling the dist out of the head, DON'T ROTATE THE SHAFT!!! Unless you're doing a timing chain job, you shouldn't ever need to reset your timing.

Also, I'm pretty sure that your main problem was the dist cap. Once you pulled it out and the center tip broke off, rotted off, etc. you needed a new one. But then you started messing with the timing and kept trying to start the car with the timing off, hence the flooding. You just kept dumping fuel into the cylinders with no spark. You should only ever cank your motor about 3 times max. If it doesn't start after that, stop cranking!

Usually when you replace the dist. cap, you should replace the rotor too. The best OE replacements out there, IMO, are Borg/Warner, and Nippon/Denso.