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1978 3 Cylinder Merc 700 Timing

D

Dirtyhandfordtech

New member
Replaced stator, trigger, rectifier, a few broken plastic pieces. After getting everything together, with wires matching colors, engine back fires and will not run. Used a timing light to figure out which cylinder fires closes to TDC, got it to run decently, high idle, no power WOT. Thought might have a bad Amazon trigger, so I ordered another cheap trigger, different brand with basically same results. As of now, it will run, while running I can’t get enough timing to get to the 3 or 4 degrees, or whatever my manual states, it’s way advanced and don’t have enough room for adjustments, with my timing light dial at “advanced max” marks get a little closer , if I set light dial to 0, engine runs at “max spark” mark with advance arm retarded as far as it will go! what am I missing? Should I buy the 200$ trigger from iboats? Anyone else get bad triggers on for L3? Don’t know much about these motors but I am a Currently certified Ford technician and know my way around “nuts and bolts” any inputs???
 
faztbullet said:
Cannot use advance feature on timing light as it a 2 stroke motor , set the light at "0" and retest
Click to expand...
gotcha, with that being said, i kinda figured that, now with light set at zero, engine runs at "max spark" or even the .464 mark. (with number one at TDC pointer is at 0 degrees), now, should i install indicator on top cylinder and bring to TDC and zero indicator, back fly wheel off to .464 and then set pointer to mark on flywheel then check timing?
how strong is the inner magnet for trigger supposed to be?
 
First thing is to compression test. Second is to run piston to TDC and check flywheel as someone may have took bolts out and reinstalled a couple bolts off. This wont effect timing but throws timing the scale off. Only seen 2 bad inner magnets in 45+years and hundreds of motors
 
Is it possible switch box causing cylinder one to fire at the wrong time? Using trigger wires one by one, with cylinder one, timing scale is still way off, the coil is firing no where near Tdc. Brought to TDC flywheel seems to be correct, switch box has not been replaced.
 
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