Basking in the warm glow of accomplishment, the second

There's nothing like getting your hands all dirty and greasey to make you feel like a man!

Yesterday, I tuned the engine of my Daihatsu Charade myself.

Yessireee.

Bought a distributor cap, sparkplug resistive cords, contact points, vacuum hoses from spare-part shops.

Cleaned and gapped my spark-plugs.

Replaced the sparkplug cords & distributor cap.

Removed the air-intake housing to give me better access, and also to flush out the carburetor with some cleaner.

Changed my vacuum hoses. Old ones were hard and cracking, sometimes disconnecting themselves and causing havoc with my engine idling speed.

Figured out how to connect a dwell meter. (Which I bought in Melbourne, along with the xenon timing light)

Measured the dwell angle, to make sure I'm reading the dwellmeter correctly for my 3cylinder engine.

Put in the new contact points as the old ones were already slightly burnt. Followed by several minutes of starting and stopping the engine while checking the dwellmeter until I've got the heel gap right, with the dwell angle settling over the upper ranges which I'm hoping will be better for higher speed performance. But then, the dwellmeter is a cheap one, who knows how good the calibration is in the first place...

Warmed up the engine and made adjustments to the throttle screw, idling adjustment screw, high speed idling screw. Engine idling had been off by 300rpm for the last few months, and there's great satisfaction to have it done right finally. Now the engine won't sip so much fuel while sitting around waiting for the lights to change.

Had a few hiccups using the xenon timing light. Almost thought I toasted it when I put the inductive pickup too near the engine. Even packed the thing up and accepted it sadly as broken already. Then I took it out again and gave it a few more stubborn tries. Finally got it working. Figured out where to point the strobe light to find the engine's timing marks. On the CB23 engine, it's this little window on the clutch housing, looking onto the flywheel. So... what am I looking at?

The service manual I printed out helpfully told me to set the ignition timing to 5degrees BTDC (below top dead centre) at 800rpm. Erm.... Yes... But, how, what????

Then, several more readings of www.daihard.org told me to look for a small dimple on the flywheel with the strobe light.

Adjustment was easy. Have seen a mechanic do this before. Just loosen a nut under the distributor and turn the distributor around until you've got the right timing, then tighten the nut. That mechanic did it by ear, turning until he thought the engine sounded right. My timing light showed that he was off by a good 10 degrees. With the light, it was easy enough to align the dimple to the notch, tighten the nut, cover back the window on the clutch housing, and JOB DONE!!

Well, I don't get to adjust my air fuel mixture since I don't have a CO level meter. But this should be set right from the factory, and a cap is put over the adjustment screw. And from the looks of my sparkplugs, it doesn't look like my mixture was overly rich.

I only skipped over the valve clearance adjustments. I probably don't want to open up my engine and try to adjust something to a clearance of 0.20mm. Pretty sure I can't measure a fraction of a mm with a ruler.


This adventure was brought to you by:
-Maybank Credit Card Centre, for giving me an RM50 MPH Book Voucher
-MPH, for selling me Auto Repair for Dummies
-http://www.daihard.org, for the Daihatsu engine manuals