Hello all, can someone please describe/explain to us how we set the timing on 2.0 aircooled bus. and how we find Top Dead Center as we have no notch on our pulley. we renovated the engine and put it back in yesterday, when we tried to start her all we got was 1 big huge backfire bang. grateful for help. regards, mrs Asa Gradin
i had no notch on my pulley when i did mine i took the fan off and found that some plank had put the pulley on backwards so the notch was on the wrong side and couldn't be seen. it may be worth checking yours for this too.
the oldskool way is ok to do but you need to be careful, and need two people. You're looking for TDC at #1 FIRING position, not the overlap stroke. So; Remove the right hand rocker cover. Remove the distributor cap Remove the sparkplug from #1 cylinder Take a pencil with an eraser on the end and slide the pencil into the hole ERASER end first. Carefully hold this in place when you can feel the piston. Have someone turn the engine on the pulley clockwise until you see and feel the pencil move OUT of the cylinder. You have TDC when you can move the pulley backwards and forwards and the pencil rides up and down - TDC is when the pencil reaches its 'crest' and you have the rotor is pointing to #1 firing position (about 5 o'clock when you look down on it. Check that the valves on #1 are both closed (springs fully extended) You now have TDC If you have a timing scale you now need to find 0 on the scale and make a thick mark on the pulley which will be your future guide for TDC, make a thinner mark 180 degrees away from this. Easy as pie However, the pulley WILL have a timing notch - its possible that you have a 914 pulley - do you have a little unscrewable plug in the top of your front fan casing? If so take this out and take a look down the hole ;D
that's why you need to hold the pencil in place against the piston crown as yes, the hole for the sparkplug is at an angle. How did you get all the bits of broken pencil out? ;D
Aha yes maybe I'll try that one day. The pencil fortunately didn't lose any bits, but it came out like it had been squeezed in a vice. I got given a Snakescope for Christmas. With that you can stick it in the plug hole and view the piston coming up the stroke, a bit like keyhole surgery. There is or was, I've since been told, a mark on the back edge of the fan to line up with the crank case split. This is additional to the mark on the pulley, and was used in early T4 engines which had a viewing window in the air ducting. I don't know if this is there on later engines. Can anybody confirm?
