I lined up the crank pully with the far right mark to set the valve gap. I made a mark on the dist. body where the rotor should point to #1 with the cap off. I took the cap off and the rotr doesn't point right to the mark. It does point generally in that direction but not right at the mark for #1 maybe 1/4 inch to the side of the mark. I triple checked the mark I made. Is this normal or do I have slop somewhere??

That is fine, when you look at the end of
the rotor, you will notice there is a wide
piece of metal to conduct the spark to the
cap, this gives you quite a wide range of
motion where the spark is still carried to
the propper plug.

I had a rotor melt in the base where it locks
to the distributor shaft, was pointing way out,
and I was getting popping out of the intake,
finally I pulled the rotor off to find the problems
and discovered it 

Wild

There is three "tabs" on the rotor and one of the outside tabs was pointing or close to pointing to number one I just thought it should have been more precise like the center tab. On another note- I got water in my distributor and it backfired real bad in the intake I think a few times while trying to start - what could this have damaged if anything? Has anyone seen this type of backfiring blow out gaskets or anything?

Thanks,
Mike

I've only seen damage in really severe or weird cases........

You're probly fine, run it and see.

Zag

Yes it runs. I probably should not have done this but I rocked the crank a little left right and noticed there was kinda a dead spot or you could rock it left and right a little without the distr. rotor turning at all. I thought this was strange but since I just bought it with 70,000 miles on it I didn't want to look too hard at it for fear of what I may find. I was thinking a worn crank key or sloppy timing belt or nothing. It seems to run good but it does really rap out on the highway.
    I took the exhaust manifold off cause it was cracked in three places. I ordered the Thorley header cause calmini didn't have any and wouldn't for two weeks which I have read to mean months when they are concerned. It will be here Friday so I went out Today to take off the one piece downpipe/cat so I could cut the cat off and reuse it. I looked in the downpipe and on one side the inner wall had broken from the outer wall. Thats why I ordered the header-kill two birds with ine stone. Now I lloked at the cat and there is a netting metal wad poking out the exit side of it-looks clogged. Damn - now I need a new cat and probably muffler since it is probably full of stuff from the cat.
   I now wonder if the above problems didn't cause the manifold to get too hot and crack so much and also wonder how it was affecting the performance. I will say just to walk by the Tracker you would smell gas and the oil reeked of gas. Previous owner kept alot of records of regular oil changes.........

Just running on at the keyboard - reply if you want to comment.

Mike

The slop is probably just the gears
from the cam to the distributor, and
there should be a little freeplay, as long
as the disributor is in time it will be fine

Wild

Curious...

I am rebuilding an 86k  16-valve that had a crack on the #4 pipe in the exhaust header.
It's main problem was the fact that some idiot at the used car lot screwed up the crankshaft (wallowed the woodruff key by trying the remove the crank gear instead of simply unbolting the harmonic balancer).  The engine was patched together and the vehicle was sold.  After a few days of driving, the woodruff wallowed and the timing got so bad that the new owner abandoned the vehicle.  I picked it up for next to nothing.

Which brings me (belatedly) to the point:  Is there lots of play on the  on the harmonic balancer at the front of the engine?  Does it wobble?  If it does, there is your timing problem.

I hear what your saying about the wobble. I am also into the 88 $ 89 MR2 Supercharged and sometimes when you put on a oversized crank pulley to up the boost it will wallor out the key or key slot. I haven't looked real hard at this yet cause I don't think I have wanted to know if that was the problem : ) . I do not feel any wobble though. You should have seen the wobble on the a/c pulley from the clutch eating up the front case where the bearing slides over. I went to the salvage yard and got a R134 compressor off a Metro, same compressor with a different top. I swapped tops and was back in business for $28.