1988 4.9 timing question
 

Hi all,


New to this forum. I am trying to help a friend of mine's son with an old truck he is trying to get on the road. I helped him get some wiring problems straightened out and got the injectors going. Found distributor 180 out and got that straight. Did a static timing and set it at top dead center and it started right up. Tried to set the timing with my timing light at 10 BTDC. First we started the truck and I wanted to make sure the "spout" circuit was working due to the many wiring issues this truck has. When we unplugged the Spout connector the engine did react a little so I assumed that the spout circuit was good. We had to turn the distributor quite a bit to get it set at 10 BTDC and it was running a little rough. Plugged the Spout connector back in and the was no change in the timing mark or the running of the engine. The engine seems a little harder to start. It ran better at 0 TDC. Shouldn't the timing mark advance some when we reconnected the Spout connector? Any suggestions on what to check. We may have some vacuum line issues that we are trying to fix too. Thanks for any help, I am sure we will have more questions as we bring this this back to life. It is 1988 F150 4.9 manual tranny. thanks again.


Ed