Hi. I'm a novice by most standards here, but have done jobs such as valve adjustment, replacing radiator, etc. on my Civic. I'm helping my sister get her 1989 Accord LXi to pass smog and it failed the timing check, the smog expert got a timing reading of TDC??? I checked it today and it's maybe 1-degree past TDC, but it's supposed to be 15-degrees +/-2. I'm afraid to adjust my sister's distributor because being 14-degrees off seems excessive.

Am I right that twisting the distributor a couple centimeters will never make up this much ground? Does anyone have any experience with needing this much of an advance? I'm afraid something might be off by a tooth, in which case the job gets too big for me.

It seems to drive fine, maybe a little sluggish though, but no obvious loss of power, like that which a misfire would cause.

THANKS! Robert Jason

 

timing belt may be off 1 tooth

 

Okay, thank you. Bummer.

 

I advanced the distributor as far as it would go and it went from 2-degrees to about 12-degrees. Needs to be 15 to pass smog, so I'm guessing my only choice is to have someone look at the timing belt being off a tooth. I wonder if that can be fixed without taking as much apart as a timing belt replacement.

THANKS again for the advice.