I was working on my brothers 91 tracker all week end(pain in the A$$). Truck ran rough and studdered at take off and he said one time the manifold was red hot and only drove about ten miles. so we decided to change the manifold and put on a thorley header and 2" exaust all the way out.... the  header looks cool as hell. But the truck dose not run any better so i put the timming light on it couldnt find the mark so took #1 spark plug out put to top dead center and distrbuter was 180 off so i put at #1 droped it back in truck wouldnt run at all so i took timming cover off and set both gears to the notches and put timming belt back on and the distrbuter at #1 still dont run put it back to 180 off and she fires right up?
 checked firring order about five times now its all right..........


         Now im to the point where i dont even know anymore its like its running where it shouldnt but dont run where it should be ............     


sooo i think i need help so i dont pull my hair out and bash my head on the ground


                          Thank you in advance for any advice??

    is the camshaft pulley 180 out if you take off rocker cover and #1 is at tdc if youroch timing gears back and forth and 1 way intake valve open the other xhaust valve opens your mechanical timing is 180 out wich would make the distributer fire xactly 180 degres out (thats all ok) just backwards no need to change. check for burned plugs if the manifold got that hot could burn plugs or exhaust valves. also check if cat is pluged usualy if u pull the o2 sensor it will alow it to run if cat is pluged. it could be something else all together but there are some places to start. HTH

if it is a 16 valve it times on the #4 piston when changing a timming belt. and the dist turns ccw. you have to put a paper clip in the test plug in order to time it to 5 deg. btdc. make sure that your bottom  pully did not spin on the rubber if you were using it to turn your engine over, I checked mine against my flywheel marks and it was way off.(mines in a sammie) just hang in there.

thanks for the advice im going to pull the valve cover off and check for that so as soon as i get back from the shop i will post agin ...

well pulled the valve cover off and when the crank and the cam gear are at top dead center the #1 valve set  are both open so i then turn the crank  to top dead center one time and the timming gear sets at 6 oclock ant the #4 valve sets are open.... so my next question is what about the distrbuter gear can that twist inside or is that all one? im going to put new timming belt in tomarrow and if anybody thinks the dist.. can twist then ill pull one out of my motors and try it in this one... well thanks agin any more info will help...

 somthing doesnt sound right if you turn the engine over manualy the intake valve will open on the down stroke,then close for the up compresion stroke(tdc)then spark and compresion down stroke , then up for exhaust and right here between exhaust up and intake down is the only place boyh valves shoul be open and even then with a stock cam there is no overlap. yes i have sen the timing gear in the end of the cam shear and turn to check for this remove three bolts from distributer and pull it offMAKE SURE TO MARK TDC EVEN IF IT IS WRONG IT IS A GOOD REFERENCE hth

i will try this but would that cause the problem i ve been explaining it seems when i put it together and ran it for a while it  didnt sputter but it idled at 2000 rpms and when i hit the gas it seemed to sound like lost power or a bog or something so now im going to check that dist.. gear thing tomarrow. as soon as i get back  home tomarrow i will post agin and agin i thank you for your advice and time. 

on the cam it has a pin in the front of it you can see real good with the cam bolt out if it is gone it has moved,the cam has a gear on the back that is pressed on but have never seen a problem with that, the bottom smaller belt drive has a woodruf key(spell check) that has a problem and will slip, loc-tite has a bearing formula you could use on it when you take  it out of the oven and slide it back on and get it close to 100 lb of torque on the bolt(ya I know it's higher than the book)I took off my napa belt and replaced it with another brand and lost 600 rpm's of bottom end torque so I will be going back to napa with the shorter timing belt.

well just got back from shop. i was looking at this whole thing and i looked back at all the posts and i notice  that if the timming gears are at 12 o clock then the #4 should be at TDC so hence the dist. rotor should be pointing at the #4 plug wire. And i was puting the dist. in at the #1 so i was tring to start it at 180 off and when i was puting to 180 off (so i thought) it was actualy right where it was suppose to be. so now it runs pretty good other than a high idle that i cant get rid of. So my next ? is that thing you have to jump the c and d terminal to time it correctly where is it they said by the batt but i cant find it dose any body have a pic of this thing?    And im sorry for confusing everybody but i was really getting fustrated with this thing. And it just turns out i  had to sit back and look at every thing a little closer... AND I THANK YOU GUYS AGIN VERY MUCH.