Who the hell knows about rotor phasing???

[Hatch]

Ok I have just heard of this for the first time today, I have been chasing a random misfire for a while now and noticed that my cap is firing on the corner of the plug wire termenal, guy at work said he had this happen on his race car and some guy came and changed his dizzy a tooth.
I type this in to google and found a video on you tube from MSD saying buy a adjustable race rotor.
Ok so my question is how do I adjust the rotor phase??
If the only way is to buy an adjustable race rotor where can I get one on a Saturday night or Sunday?(cause my car is down till tomorrow night)
Does anyone in town have one?(cause I dont want to order one and wait)
Any info would be great!

Thanks in advance

[Old Man]

If the timing is good you don't have a problem with the dizzy being off a tooth. This would not be a random problem it would be a consistent problem.

[shagwag]

I have never had to phase a rotor on my motor

[Hatch]

If the timing is good you don't have a problem with the dizzy being off a tooth. This would not be a random problem it would be a consistent problem.

That's what I was thinking but this was really trying to sell me on this. Then I watched the MSD video on rotor phasing and that would explain why the terminals on the cap are only being fired on only on a corner of the termanls (its hard to EXPLAIN) I we'll try to get apic in the morning. I have never seen anything like this before, I have been beating my head up aganst the wall with this thingfor quite some time

[Hatch]

If the timing is good you don't have a problem with the dizzy being off a tooth. This would not be a random problem it would be a consistent problem.

That's what I was thinking but this guy was really trying to sell me on this. Then I watched the MSD video on rotor phasing and that would explain why the terminals on the cap are only being fired on only on a corner of the termanls (its hard to EXPLAIN) I we'll try to get apic in the morning. I have never seen anything like this before, I have been beating my head up aganst the wall with this thingfor quite some time

[Hatch]

I have never had to phase a rotor on my motor

I have never ran into a distributor cap looking like this before. Oh by the way the wagons rear end is getting a major overhaul in the morning.

[shagwag]

I have never ran into a distributor cap looking like this before. Oh by the way the wagons rear end is getting a major overhaul in the morning.

sweet! Its WAY overdue lol

[budderigs]

Joe is your cam degreed? I have never heard of rotor phasing but I have seen a similar situation to what you are describing. If you retard your cam timing more then 4 degrees you have to advance your timing to match it.

If I recall correctly you advance your base timing 2 degrees. You are really going to need a dyno to set your max advance but off the top of my head I would say 34 degrees at 3000 Rpms.

[Ford Fan]

Rotor phasing really comes into play when you are using a large amount of timing retard. We phase the rotor on my motor any time we have the distributor out. We start with base timing of 32 degrees and when the Nitrous comes on we pull 10+ degrees of timing. If you see how far the rotor moves away from the terminal on the cap you'd be surprised. The rotor could pretty easily jump a terminal on the cap.

If you want to check it take a spare distributor cap and drill a hole just to the inside of the number one terminal on the cap. Fire up the car, take your timing light hooked up to the number one wire, and aim it in the hole. You will see how far away from the terminal the rotor is when theI cylinder fires and can adjust accordingly if you have a crank trigger. If not, I don't believe its adjustable....unless there is an adjustable rotor as you mentioned???? I've never really looked for one I guess.

On a crank trigger setup all the distributor does is transfer the spark from the coil wire to each cylinder. It does not control when the spark happens....so you can spin the distributor all you want and it won't change timing....only cause a misfire if its off too far.

[mark_eych]

That is a good explanation. The thought of turning a distributor and not changing timing sounds wrong to a guy that used to change points every few thousand miles. I see what you say with another trigger the dizzy only delivers the spark not times it.

[ds5dot]

You need to Phase the rotor, only if you have a crank trigger.

[Hatch]

Ok, so I think something is really messed up here.
My engine guy says the same thing that the only time you need to phase the rotor is on a crank trigger, so him and I for the hell of it, drilled a hole in the cap just to see.
Fired it up it up and could not even see the rotor tip. If we took the timing light and angled it off to the advance side you could see it, so by what we were seeing it is off quite a bit. Also noticed that if hook up the timing light up to different plug wire some are losing pulse signals at times and at the same time it misfires also am getting weak spark at the plug side of the wire but have good spark at the cap side of the coil wire.

MSD does make an adjustable rotor for phasing the rotor so at this time I am thinking about getting one of these and a new cap and seeing if it helps my situation.
At this point I am willing to try anything!
So if anyone has any suggestions or think they may know what is happening please let me know what you think.

Thanks for all the input!!

[Hatch]

Joe is your cam degreed? I have never heard of rotor phasing but I have seen a similar situation to what you are describing. If you retard your cam timing more then 4 degrees you have to advance your timing to match it.

If I recall correctly you advance your base timing 2 degrees. You are really going to need a dyno to set your max advance but off the top of my head I would say 34 degrees at 3000 Rpms.

I would never put a cam in without degreeing it, so yes it was degreed.
My overall timing is 37-38 degees right now

[tim]

Problem with buying an adjustable rotor is that you aren't really fixing the problem, just adding a band aid. Correct? Is it possible that you degreed the came incorrectly? Why aren't others experiencing this same issue?

[bluchev]

I would like to know how you came to the conclusion that your "cap is firing on the corner of the plug wire terminal" ? Did you climb in the distributor cap while it was running to observe the spark path?


This part has me confused.