Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

So, I have the factory service manual and it says to use a paper clip to short out a certain connector, and NOT disconnect the connector while you rotate the distributor to the the right amount of advance. I set mine (was off quite a bit) and it runs much better and much stronger. However, I experimented with the connector shorted and not shorted and it does not make a whit of difference. None at all. That bothered me, so I thought I'd put it out for the collective. Anyone else experience this? In other words, I set the timing to 5 deg advance like in the manual, and I'm staring at the timing mark under the timing light and disconnect that paper clip and reconnect it and no movement of the pulley mark. I was expecting it to move. Anyone?

Doug

That's actually a good sign, and fairly normal. In theory, base timing (with the connector shorted) should be correct for good running, but in practice the ECU sometimes needs to adjust the timing to compensate for things like fuel quality, temperature, altitude, or misfiring.

Shorting the connector just stops the ECU from trying to correct the timing, even if it thinks it needs to. If your timing doesn't change when you un-short the connector, it means the ECU thinks the timing doesn't need adjustment (or the ECU is broken )

If the timing *did* change when you un-shorted the connector, it would mean something is wrong and the ECU is trying to compensate for it.

Well, after driving it for a few hundred miles, the slight timing change produced quite a difference in the way the engine performs. It feels 15% stronger, and idles better, starts faster, etc, etc. I'm anxious to see the fuel economy because it went quite a bit farther on this tank of gas as well. Thanks for the input on the timing issue.

It took the vehicle from slightly annoying to drive, which took away from the cool factor, to now perfectly acceptable for daily driving. I'm kinda surprised it took me this long to check the timing, since I've done a lot of tune up parts, filters and heavy maintenance. Timing hardly gets messed with on cars, but this was a lesson to check everything.