Having stupidly taken out the advance/retard unit (to service/clean) and forgot to make some marks on it to help reassemble, I now find I’m stuck. The flywheel does not have any letters on it to assist in setting the timing up. What I do have is a pair of lines about 20mm apart and then a single line further around the flywheel (when viewed from the aperture)
Any clues on what I should do? Thanks in advance, Matt
Presumably you can locate top dead centre on the firing stroke. Set the points (or electronic ignition to the mark previous to give you an approx starting point. Attach a degree wheel to the crank and find max advance. 32 degrees before TDC at 5,000 revs seems to ring a bell and mark the flywheel so you can set it up with a strobe. The manual will also have a static timing degree, you can mark that at the same time.
I recall the Haynes manual gives instruction on how to replace the distributor in the correct place.
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Thanks. When you say ‘the previous mark’ do you mean TDC?
I’ll rig up a timing wheel on the front and see if I can work it out from TDC.
It’s a while since I have done the timing on mine, but I thought the furthest round is TDC, the one before is static timing and the one about 3 teeth before that is full advance.
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I’m going to roll my sleeves up today and see if I can sort this out. There are a few white paint marks but they are not what I would call accurate markings and none of them are close together. There are proper scribed lines but no references (ie no lettering at all) to them so I will look at these angles in relation to TDC.
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Agree. The mighty Haynes suggests timing at X before TDC. Could look up the figure when I finish work.
You need to get TDC of the compression stroke. This is simpler with valve covers off so you can watch the rockers / valves move, and something like a drinking straw down the spark plug hole to see where the top of the piston is.
You may then be able to find faint marks on the flywheel tht correspond, or, not…
Could be worse, on my LM1 flywheel the letters were wrong way round, so ‘D’ was for left and ‘S’ for right. Seriously. That caused some fun and games for a new owner! (Me.) Most spectularly, getting the valve clearances totally wrong, because what I thought was TDC for the cylinder I’m working on, wasn’t …
Yes I remember that. I was hoping drinking straw wouldn’t break off the same way. 
Mike, I used the rocker cover off technique and I’m fairly certain I’m ready to try and start her today. I ran out of time over the weekend and have been away for a couple of days.
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