Best Way to set the idle mix on a 4160

[davids2toys]

Originally Posted by patrickt

I would feel better if we could confirm our measuring marks. Eight or nine years ago, I spun my harmonic balancer inside the ring. Right after I did it, I was hearing a funny "clang," like a bell ringing, and when I put my timing light on the marks they were absolutely crazy. For a moment, I was absolutely dumbfounded, because what I was seeing was impossible. Then I took a step back and figured it out. I think you should use a TDC finder, a piston stop, in your spark plug hole, and just double check that your timing marks are indeed accurate.

A few years ago when i first bought the car I thought I had that problem, not blown apart like yours, but I thought it might be slipping because initial timing was reading very high, but it ran good. I thought it could be a false high reading do to a slipping outer ring. I did all you said to do and reset my timing to what was recommended but forget the exact setting. At that point I did not know the problem so I tightened the hold down bolt at the distributor, then I marked all the way across the back of the dampener on one side. This would include both steel rings and the rubber in between. Now whenever I am working on something, I check out the stripe to see if anything is slipping. The stripe is still 100% in tact indicating that my dampener has never moved and was not the problem