Timinig question

[70RatPatrol]

Just picked up a 70 gtx has a 383 with a mallory unilite dist. and the car will not fire, never worked with this ignition before. Looking for some advice.

[JVMopar]

Do you have spark?

[Rich Kinsley]

Hmmm, didn't the GTX only come with a 440 or hemi? Anyway it's a good idea to see which system is the culprit. As stated, does it have spark? Does the accelerator pump squirt gas? Does it turn over good and try to start?

[Manifold]

Mallory Unilite test procedures:

www [dot] malloryperformance [dot] com [forward slash] pdf [forward slash] UniliteTest [dot] pdf

(Sorry for the butchered link, but the rules here won't allow me to post a correctly formatted link yet.)

[70RatPatrol]

yea 70 X had the 440, this one has a 383 fresh everything is new just been sitting for awhile. I do have spark, getting gas. what is happening is that it will either backfire out of the carb so i assumed it was 180 off then i switched it and now it will backfire out the exhaust.

[70RatPatrol]

Hey thanks manifold i checked out the web site and it appears my dist. is bad tested it out only stayed at 2 on my volt meter installed a different one i had sitting around and it fired right up but i am now experiencing another problem at 3000+ rpms it pings, i replaced the points and condenser and set it, took it to a shop and he spun my dist. and said it was pinned and 34 degrees advanced so for the time being is there away instead of pulling the springs out of this dist. i can set it so it runs somewhat decent

[Manifold]

Originally Posted by 70RatPatrol

Hey thanks manifold i checked out the web site and it appears my dist. is bad tested it out only stayed at 2 on my volt meter installed a different one i had sitting around and it fired right up but i am now experiencing another problem at 3000+ rpms it pings, i replaced the points and condenser and set it, took it to a shop and he spun my dist. and said it was pinned and 34 degrees advanced so for the time being is there away instead of pulling the springs out of this dist. i can set it so it runs somewhat decent

I'm glad you figured it out! Sorry to hear the Unilite is broke though.

If the mechanical advance is locked out (pinned), is there any way to unlock it/get the pin out? If I'm understanding correctly, you swapped out distributors and not just the guts. Does this working distributor have a built-in mechanical advance (sounds like it since you mentioned springs)? If so, I would think you could free up/unpin the mechanical advance so that you can do a normal timing setting.

For the moment, you may be stuck with setting the initial to the locked out number of 34 degrees. That could be rough on starting it, as you may get kick back.

I'd suggest selling this distributor (if it can't be made to work for you - a racer won't mind a locked out distributor) and spending the money on fixing the Unilite, if all it needs is the ignition module (though, they're not cheap). I'm still all for figuring out if the locked out distributor can be unlocked.