I bought a 1989 Ford f250 with 5.8 l four-wheel drive hey quite a few issues, many of them electrical. One thing that has me stumped and it's affecting drivability his timing. The previous owner stated he replaced the distributor but did not check the timing because he did not have a timing light I replaced the cap, button plugs wires and I just pull everything off and label the cap with the correct firing order. With number one piston at top dead center on compression stroke the button was at approximately one-o-clock. Aligning the distributor so that the number 1 on the cap rendered no room for clockwise rotation of housing to adjust time
And I could only get 0 degrees with the spout plugged in with no room to rotate the housing to get 10 degrees before top dead center. Previous owner has set with the button pointing towards the number 3 terminal with the number one piston to top dead center and rotated the plug wires all one terminal.truck ran like that but never seem to run quite right and I kept having problems with losing spout signal and idle air control . I pulled the distributor and set it back in so that the button pointed to the number 3 terminal based on the original setup then I rotated the housing counterclockwise until it was back at the number one terminal, that gave me timing adjustability but again my spouse doesn't work and I have no idle air control I've replaced that pigtail with another one and I have the same problem does that sound like theirs still broken wire somewhere that I'm just not finding. My apology for the long-winded thread but I try to be detail any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

 

I would recommend finding top dead center on cylinder 1 and verify that the distributor is installed correctly. Once you have that, verify the firing order is correct and your wires are routed correctly. You can then remove the SPOUT plug and then set timing to 10 degrees BTDC. You MUST pull the SPOUT to set timing. As far as the no SPOUT signal issue, you could have a wiring issue or an ignition control module failing. You could pull it and have it tested.

 

Yea that’s a lot of your problem. As stated below, base timing is set with the SPOUT removed. Otherwise the computer is trying to adjust timing the same time you are.

 

If the rotor is lined up at TDC but the housing can't be rotated far enough without hitting something to set the timing, the distributor wasn't "stabbed" or installed correctly. You could just move all the plug wires over one step in the cap, the distributor doesn't care what cap terminal is #1 just so long as the correct firing order is maintained.

If you want to get it right bring the #1 piston to exact TDC on the compression stroke, and remove and re-install the distributor so that the rotor is aligned with the #1 terminal position on the distributor cap. It's a little tricky because of the helical cut on the gears, ya hafta lead it a little bit initially so that it ends up in the right spot when the housing is all the way fully seated. Hold yer tongue just right!! Try not to use bad words, or cast aspersions on the prior owner's ancestry.