1989 300 crank no start
#13
Senior Member
The 300 is gear on gear rather than a timing chain, but they can strip the teeth off the gears and go all to hell, if you can get a wrench on the crank, and turn the motor a few degrees one way, then watch the rotor button try turning the engine backwards and see if the distributor moves, it should turn the distributor pretty much instantly when you turn the crank, if that looks okay, mark the rotor button position, and turn the motor by hand two complete turns, you should be back to the same place on the rotor, if you are turn it two more turns because I'm paranoid, and check that you are in the same place.
Next, find top dead center on the compression stroke, you can Google that, my hillbilly way is to lick my calibrated thumb, and apply it to the sparkplug hole, then bump the starter until I get pressure hissing from around said thumb, then turn the engine with a ratchet on the crank and a screwdriver inserted in the plug hole, when I feel the screwdriver stop going up and start going down, I back up just as hair, and call it close enough. Check the mark on you balancer, if its close, turn the motor until the mark is at about ten degrees before tdc, hook a test light across the terminals of the coil, turn on the key and rotate the distributor until the light goes out, if the rotor button is pointing at number one, you should be close enough to start.
Next, find top dead center on the compression stroke, you can Google that, my hillbilly way is to lick my calibrated thumb, and apply it to the sparkplug hole, then bump the starter until I get pressure hissing from around said thumb, then turn the engine with a ratchet on the crank and a screwdriver inserted in the plug hole, when I feel the screwdriver stop going up and start going down, I back up just as hair, and call it close enough. Check the mark on you balancer, if its close, turn the motor until the mark is at about ten degrees before tdc, hook a test light across the terminals of the coil, turn on the key and rotate the distributor until the light goes out, if the rotor button is pointing at number one, you should be close enough to start.