I can safely say I never noticed until now. I pulled my distributer to change the ring seal gasket. I put it back in, it fired right up. I checked the timing it's at 6 degrees. Perfect. I was doing it at night and after about 1 minute of the engine running the manifolds starting glowing! What's going on?

TIA!!!

Mike

 

My guess is your running rich causing the exhaust gases to be much hotter than normally supposed to be. Change your oxygen sensor lately?

 

Cats maybe?

 

If the exhaust was glowing red while you were timing this is normal. Most people do it in the day time and never ever noticed. I had the same problem. I noticed the headers glowing red while timing the car. Problem is rich, or retarded timing will cause this. When timing the car you are only at 6* which is to little timing. Remember that this is a base, and the ECM advances it once hooked back up. The glow should go away. If not then you may have a burnin rich problem

 

not starting trouble, just wondering, doesn't running rich tend to cool the engine down? When running lean, combustion temperatures go up, right?

Or does this logic only apply to the combustion chamber? I guess this makes sense, if there's fuel going into a hot exhaust manifold, it's just gonna get hotter...

nevermind, I guess this answers my question! :smash:

 

I thought running lean caused glowing manifolds too. :confused:

 

Well If I advance the timing it backfires out the intake and dies. If I retard the timing the idle jumps to about 1600 rpm and won't go down. Another problem worth mentioning is that my passenger side knock sensor wire melted off and is not connected. I am not sure that has anything to do with it. Thanks all for your help. Is it possible that the car could run if the distributer is 180 degrees off? The book says that at TDC the rotor should be facing the #1 spark plug on the cap. It's in the general area but about 1 inch past it. Is that amount of leniency allowed?

Thanks again everyone! :)

Mike

 

A lean condition indicates higher exhaust gas temps. At #1 cylinder TDC the rotor should be facing the # 1 cylinder.

 

No one has said anything about a clogged or partially blocked cat. Will definately make the manifolds glow! :rolleyes:

 

True Blue:
No. You are correct. Lean engines run hot. Rich ones cooler. My guess is that either they are running red naturally, or the problem might be, as one of the earlier posts mentioned, that the spark advance might be restricted (in a retarded mode) during the test.
I had a Porsche 944 whose manifold glowed in the dark as well. As it turmed out, they all did. As one mechanic pointed out, we seldom look at engines in the dark.

 

It's a brand new cat. So it's not that! :cheers:


[Modified by Red84CrossFire, 7:15 PM 3/11/2002]

 

the manifolds will glow if its running lean or there is a clogged cat

 

That sounds like major problems.
The timing chain could jump a tooth on a hi-mileage motor.
Timing gears could be improperly installed on a new motor.
The harmonic balancer could slip on the hub.
The cats/mufflers could be clogged.
Could also have a vacumme leak causing the high idle.

 

To set the record straight, running rich OR lean can cause glowing manifolds. If the problem is running rich, you run the risk of melting the cat like I did. My problem was running rich THEN smoking the cat...not having the cat cause the glowing manifolds. Bunch of different scenarios as you can see :D a little for everyone ;)

You mention having the distributor off possibly an inch. It is not a problem and here's why. When you pulled the distributor to replace the gasket, lifting the distributor caused the distributor to rotate slightly on the way up. Since the bottom of the distributor gear mates to the top of the oil pump shaft, the fact that the distributor gear spun a small amount probably also spun the pump shaft. In order to relaign the distributor, you probably didn't stick a long screwdriver down the oil pump shaft to account for the fact that it turned. This is 100% A-OK because everything is relative to the rotor and the cap, not the distributor base and the oil pump shaft. You would think that if it turned CW 10 degrees, then upon reinstallation it would turn 10 degrees CCW but this is not always the case depending on how tight of a clearance there is at the mating surface.

The engine would not run if the distributor was 180 degrees off. If you were lucky, you could crank it and get a few hellatious backfires, but that would be about it. Like I said, everything is relative, so if you thought you were 180 off, you could move all plugwires 4 places CW and restart it. IOW, 1 would be where 6 was, 8 would be where 5 was...

Next step...with the EST wire connected (it was in bypass mode earlier, correct?) make sure that when you rev the engine that spark actually advances and doesn't retard. That can cause a headache. Good luck! -Matt-

 

Thanks for your help. I am going to replace the knock sensor, get an '85 fuel pump and recheck the timing. I am only getting 9.0 psi so I think that might be why I am running lean. Or the car is in limp-home mode because the knock sensor is not hooked up. I will post when I get it fixed. :) Thanks.

 

My TPIS headers run cherry red under no light and have a red tinge in shop light. I have a new Random cat and my Autoxray scans look good, plugs look good. Can't tell you how many plug wires I gone through, mostly at the 7 Cyl position. It's been hell insulating anything even close to the headers from the heat. I don't recall ever seeing my stock shorties (pre-buildup) glowing though, doesn't sound right to me either. Any guys out there with strokers not running glowing headers?

 

This happened to me once and my problem was timing related. After I got the timing right the manifolds did not glow anymore. If your manifolds are glowing you may be cooking the gaskets, I did.