Static time a tractor engien

[Charlie M]

I'm back to working our Ford 4000 forklift at our rail road museum. I've had some previous posts here if it looks familiar to anyone. Its a 4 cylinder gas engine. My questions about static timing the engine. I've had the distributor completely out of the tractor for inspection and clean up. There was a lot of junk in with the timing weights. So I 've read if the tractor was running I would time it at 5 degrees BTDC. I can roll the engine until that mark comes up and I've confirmed #1 piston is there on the compression stroke. I have put the 5 degree mark into the middle of the inspection opening since I don't find a pointer to set it to. Is that a good position to static time the engine or since there are no RPM's should I put the engine on a different setting to time like that. I've static timed Farmalls but I'm still learning the differences with this Ford. I do have a good spark now which I had none a few weeks ago.

 

[Janicholson]

Timing it to TDC is accurate, and it will run like that. Once running use a timing light at slow idle to set the 5 degrees. If it trys to turn against the starter move it toward retard till it starts reliably, but not past TDC in the retard direction. Jim

 

[Andy Wickiser]

I'm back to working our Ford 4000 forklift at our rail road museum. I've had some previous posts here if it looks familiar to anyone. Its a 4 cylinder gas engine. My questions about static timing the engine. I've had the distributor completely out of the tractor for inspection and clean up. There was a lot of junk in with the timing weights. So I 've read if the tractor was running I would time it at 5 degrees BTDC. I can roll the engine until that mark comes up and I've confirmed #1 piston is there on the compression stroke. I have put the 5 degree mark into the middle of the inspection opening since I don't find a pointer to set it to. Is that a good position to static time the engine or since there are no RPM's should I put the engine on a different setting to time like that. I've static timed Farmalls but I'm still learning the differences with this Ford. I do have a good spark now which I had none a few weeks ago.

I posted this before. It's the instructions for static timing from the Ford service manual. They have a picture of what you should see at the timing port.