*******Please Help***** Distributor electrical question 318****************
 

i have a 1965 Coronet 440 with a 318 in it.

Well, i was driving one night and it began to feel like it was
"missing" then it began to backfire...i pulled over and notice somehow the plug had come off the coil?? I reattached it and it still was missing and the backfiring worsened. Eventually it would barely stay running backfiring like a S.o.B. ...I managed to get it home and the next morning I replaced the rotor, distributor cap, plugs and all the wires.....that helped a little but still nowhere near running right.....won't stay idleing and still has the "missing" feeling real bad..

Did I fry the points? The coil maybe? Any help would REALLY be appreciated.

before you go changing parts, have you checked the hold down bolt? maybe its a little loose and the dizzy turned messing up the timing?

It could have turned a few degrees, might want to check the timing, do you have a light? As most of us know the place not to start solving a problem is in the wallet.

My 318 backfired and somehow set my timing 180 which bent my rods so start with your timing and if you have a dead cylinder rods might be a possibility

timing, sounds like to much advance. after that i would replace coil. at the extreme you could have even jumped a tooth on your chain depending on what kind. it happened to me in my old 318. if its a stock chain though the teeth are so big you would probably have catostrauphic failure... so maybe not..

I friend of mine had an 86 ramcharger that had the same problem and it turned out to be that the timing chain somehow skipped two teeth. the motor was all stock as well.

How many miles you got on it, as I see it jumping teeth is if it has a lot of miles on it with more wear?

I pulled the gear and chain off a motor with 38,000 miles on it, stock chain had negligible slack in it, so not sure where the slack starts to really be a factor.

If I were you and the distributor would appear to not have moved then I would check the timing chain. Otherwise if it was loose I would check the timing manually with the mark on the harmonic balancer and see if it lines up with the cylinder being at the top of its stroke. Just my advice unless you want to go pull all the stuff off the front of the engine.