TJRed76

I ran into a problem the other night when I was trying to adjust my valves.
When I got the factory mark on my dampener to TDC, My rotor was nowhere neer my #1 nor my #6 cylinder.
I got my compression tester on the 1st cylinder and with the guage of the tester felt the pressure with my thumb, until the engine was at TDC.
When I looked at the dampener, there was a marker line there that the previous owner had put there.
My question: Is the wrong dampener on the car? or Since the distributer has been replaced, could that be throwing off the timing marK?
I finally set the valves with the engine running and the car runs fine, but has a mild vibration between 25 and 40 mph. This makes me think that it is the wrong dampener.

Any insights are welcome. Thanks.
TJ


[Modified by TJRed76, 2:24 AM 2/11/2002]

Monty

It's a strong possibibilty that your damper has separated. The outer ring will slip in relation to the inner ring, making timing impossible using the dampers timing marks. This is very common with the dampers on old cars like ours. You probably either need to get a new, replacement damper, or upgrade to something like an ATI or Fluidamper that has a fixed ring. The upgrade is only necessary if you're also making significant upgrades to your engine.

70BBvert

Yep - sounds like the ring has moved. You can also have them rebuilt at a reasonable cost. These guys did the damper for me on my Mustang last year.
http://members.aol.com/damperdoc/dampers.html
Degreed the cam & the damper was right on the money. Think it cost $59 plus $10 shipping

john's '81 mouse

Quote: "Think it cost $59 plus $10 shipping"

For that much money, you can purchase a new stock / OEM type harmonic balancer. Really no need for the more expensive fluid dampners, unless you'
re really going high performance and turning some high rpms in my opinion.