I have a 1962 Tempest with a 195 4cyl that I rebuilt a few years ago. The other day while out for a drive
I pulled up and shut the car off and it started stumbling and tried to stay running. I
got my timing light out and the marks on the balancer are running at about 20 0r
30 degrees before TDC. When I put the timing back to 6 like it should be and it
still runs but in a trip around the neighborhood it ran very hot. I have manually put
the engine at TDC and pulled the distributer cap off and the the rotor is not
pointing at the #1 tower, its slightly off. Has what I'm thinking happened?

 

I broke the front off and found the chain and sprockets in line as they should be. Now I have brought #1 cylinder up to TDC on the compression stroke and placed the distributer back in with the contact pointing directly at #1 tower. It will not start like that and I have to turn at least an 1/8 the way around to get it to start and then it runs like crap. Before when you manually put the cylinder on top the rotor was pointing half way between the #1 and #3 tower on the 4cyl cap. I don't understand how it was even running to begin with cause this goes against everything I know about putting an engine back in time. I may try to put the distributer back the way it was and see if I can get it to run.

Thanks for the help
Lynn