Engine 93 Timing Issues

Hi Everyone,

I’m hoping someone can provide some help. I have aproject car that I bought and it doesn’t run well. Rough idle, lack of power, and stalling. I’ve been chasing issues on this car for some time now.

This car has TFS heads and a E303 cam. I’m starting to wonder if the cam wasn’t installed right or maybe the distributor wasn’t installed right. Maybe the balancer is wrong?

so I have the spout out to check the timing andim showing the initial timing as way over advanced. It’s actually showing above30 which doesn’t seem right because I don’t have any pinging issues. I tried to get some a pic as I might come off as a crazy noob on this. You can see the pointer is past 30 and would appear to be around 40 if it had mark

If I drop the timing the engine idle gets a lot rougher and the stalling gets even worse.

Ok so I verified the balancer was good by bring the #1 cylinder to TDC and the balancer was at 0.

I happen to have a 2nd 5.0 sittin and decided to swap distributors. Bingo theengine now runs 100xs better. I think either TFI or PIP was bad. The TFI was an after market brand.

I have been chasing problems with this car for 3 years now. I have found and fixed some many issues from the previous owner when he redid the motor and top end.

I don’t want to jinx myself here but I might actually get to drive this car!