CamH Posted April 11, 2008 Share Posted April 11, 2008 Hey guys! I recently swapped a different L24 in to my 240Z (warped the head on the original one and it was cheaper to simply replace the engine). Anyways, I've had the car running alright for a few weeks now, under some kind of weird settings. For the car to run right, the distributor must be set at full advance, which seems wrong. The car will not run right until it has warmed up. I reset the SU carburetors (~3 turns for the mixture, ~2.5 turns for throttle plate - choke is hooked up). I know this is probably not an optimal setup but it seems to run ok, especially when warm. An odd problem though, is that the exhaust manifold has a noticeable glow at night when it is dark. Coolant temps are fine. Anyways, tonight, I was driving up a hill, in fifth gear at about 50MPH, the engine was under some load and it backfired (well, it sounded like the same backfire it gets constantly while I'm waiting for it to warm up from a cold start). After this, the car wanted to backfire from a stop, and under high load at low RPMs, and also was down on power. Was it possible that this "backfire" was really a knock or something and I blew out the headgasket? Any other ideas? I haven't been able to check my coolant or oil or anything because it's dark out, but I will definitely investigate tomorrow. I'm just looking for some advice as to what it could be before I start looking. Keeping my fingers crossed, this engine only needs to last me until I swap in my freshly rebuilt, forged, badass L28 in June. Thanks, guys! Cameron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin240Z Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 I had a similar problem, wit me it turned out I had the distributor gear a tooth off alignment wise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CamH Posted April 13, 2008 Author Share Posted April 13, 2008 I had a similar problem, wit me it turned out I had the distributor gear a tooth off alignment wise. Ugh, to fix that you need to take off the front cover, correct? My cam timing was off when I first got the engine, maybe the timing chain slipped and I need to correct it again... My coolant and oil both look good after putting over 200 miles on the car in the last two days so the head gasket is possibly leaky at worst, and I doubt it would cause these kind of problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin240Z Posted April 13, 2008 Share Posted April 13, 2008 Ugh, to fix that you need to take off the front cover, correct? My cam timing was off when I first got the engine, maybe the timing chain slipped and I need to correct it again... My coolant and oil both look good after putting over 200 miles on the car in the last two days so the head gasket is possibly leaky at worst, and I doubt it would cause these kind of problems. if you have to set full advance to get the car to run, then it's the timing. timing chain or the dis gear... and yeah... you have to take the front off for that.... Sucks, but that's what's probably causing the problem, and the only way to find out is to take it off and look Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CamH Posted April 16, 2008 Author Share Posted April 16, 2008 OK, well the car is running decent again. It seems that I was running really lean and the spark plugs did not like it (the were all really white when I pulled them). I think you are right about the distributor being off a bit, and I will verify this with a timing light as soon as I get a chance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ottoauto Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 Man, im havin the same problem. i was just kinda messing with it. It was running best with full advance but still backfireing under a load and idling bad (that might be somethin else). what ended up solving your problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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