In preparation for doing a valve adjustment on my 73 1.7 (1.9 big bore) I put the engine in TDC for cylynder one by locating the groove on the upper most part of the flywheel. There also was some sort of mark appearing in the V at the fan housing. When I went to do the adjustment on the number 1 cylynder I was unable to get the feeler gauge under adjusting screw of the intake valve. It appears to be in the open position. Upon examination I noticed that the destributor rotor is pointing to the number 3 cylinder wire location? I just got the car recently and it was running fine except for some backfiring upon deceleration. Any ideas what is going on here?

You are not at top dead center for #1. Spin the engine till the distributor points to #1 position and you will see the groove on the flywheel line up like before. Then check. Things should be better and able to adjust.

You need to rotate the engine 360 degrees. clockwise or anti-clockwise, it dosn't matter at this point.

Wrong stroke

The popping on decel could be an exhaust leak, or running rich.

Mike

OK got it thanks guys!

I've seen a couple of cars where the distributor gear was installed 180 degrees out.

Had me scratching my head when Iran into this

When you verify #1' trace the plug wire to ensure