1974 2.0 Resurrection, Project Thread Options

[Dck356]

Good morning. I’m new to the forum and thought I should introduce myself and start a project thread. I’ve been away from the air-cooled world for a while - I’ve had several 356s and 911s and am super excited to get this 914 back on the road.

The car is a 1974 2.0 and is in ok shape. Standard amount of rust, but the hell holes appear to be in pretty good shape. The PO bought it from a member in California and I don’t think was ever able to get it running well. When I bought the car a year ago it had been sitting for a good 12 years. The car popped up in the classifieds late one Saturday night just about 45 minutes south of me. It was priced right, plus the car was wearing a decent set of fuchs. My wife and I hopped in the car Sunday morning and brought it home.

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Here are some pics showing where I am to date. Toward the end of the the thread I’ve added pics outlining the process I’ve been following to try and get the timing dialed in. I’m afraid I need some help here from the group! So on to the pics:

Got it pulled off the trailer, power washed as much of the nastiness off as I could and tucked it away in the garage until the first batch of parts arrived.

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First order of business was to sort out the fuel system. Pulled the tank and found a bunch of nasty surface rust… not to mention a small development of mice condos and all the disgusting things that come along with them. Yuck.

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Lots of grinding and sanding…

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Taping and priming…

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And finally… ordered some L13K color-matched paint. It actually matched pretty well.

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I did a ton of prep work and am really happy with how it turned out.

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The tank had rust and crud inside, plus a pretty good size hole on the backside where it had been sitting on one of the felt pads in the front trunk. So, off to the radiator shop for a little welding, sealing, and then back home for paint. At this point I had installed all new fuel lines in the engine bay and SS lines from Tangerine in the tunnel. Also decided to go ahead and have some of the bits plated. Things just looked too nice to got back with nasty hardware.

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Got everything hooked up to the tank, added some gas… and the fuel pump promptly decided to quit. So, ordered new pump, moved it to the back of the firewall and hooked everything up.

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So this brings us to current day and the issue at hand. Here’s the challenge for the group: when I try and set the timing to 27 degrees, the rpms jump up to 3k - I tried to adjust the idle, but the idle screw is turned all the way in.

So, I wanted to outline the steps I’ve taken to see if I’ve made any mistakes. Here we go…

Step 1: jacked up rear wheel and put car in 5th gear

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Step 2: grabbed my handy TDC tool that indicates compression stroke. Put it into Cylinder #1 and turned the rear wheel until I heard the whistle.

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Step 3: with the whistle indicating the compression stroke, I continued to turn the wheel until the
distributor rotor was pointing at the #1 notch on the distributor housing.

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Step 4: I then checked to make sure that the “0” on the fan was in the correct spot. It’s a little hard to see, but it is right there.

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Step 5: then looked at the notch on the flywheel to make sure it was lined up with the split in the case. And yes, it’s right where it is supposed to be.

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Step 6: So, at this point I’m pretty sure everything is set at TDC. I went ahead and fired the car up. It started immediately at settled right in at 900 rpm. At this point I checked and adjusted the dwell right at 47 degrees:

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Step 7: at this point I hooked up my timing light and looked to see how things were lining up. May be a little tough to see, but with everything set to TDC the “0” setting is actually a little to the left of the “v” in the housing - see the little white dot. Isn’t it supposed to be lined up in the “v”?

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This is where if I turn the distributor to get to the red line (27 degrees) the rpms go up to 3k. And that is with the idle screw turned all the way in.

So what have I done wrong? Pretty positive that I’m at TDC. Am I dealing with a bad distributor or a massive vacuum leak? I’m at a total loss as to where to go from here and would really appreciate some direction.

Lastly, I will do my best to keep this thread updated with my progress. I’ve been on several other forums and I must say, I’ve been really impressed with the character of this group. Thanks in advance for everyone’s help and I look forward to jumping in!