1994 3.9l
I bought a new distributor, cap and rotor off RA to see if it would help with setting fuel sync after reading Sharedrabbit's post. I have read the instructions on here and another site. They both talk about and have pictures of the gear at the base of the shaft. Thing is this distributor does not have a gear on it. It has a flat screwdriver like end meant to go in to a slot. I think I remember reading on that Bionic Dodge fuel sync page that it described this set up.
Can anyone help clarify this? Am I supposed to have a gear?

 

Pull yours, (taking careful note of it's position) see what ya got. Drive gear may be separate, and the screwdriver feller is correct. If it is, put the new one in, in the same orientation the old one came out.

 

Thanks. Might be a day or two, weather can't make up its mind.

 

Don't live in Michigan by any chance, do you?

Actually, it's been fairly nice here the last couple days..... if you don't count the overnight frost we got for two of them.......

 

In the 1994 FSM, page 9-56, it discusses the distributor drive shaft, which has the gear.

I've attached that page, and the page from the parts lists, which shows that drive.

It's not part of the distributor.

RwP

 

Thank you Ralph.
I'm on the left coast. Smoke finally went away and rain came a few days ago. We've had calm until today and the winds are picking up, blew two 2x12's leaning against a wall over, sure to make the fires worse. Hopefully the rain its suposed to bring gets here before the wind can whip up the fires. Those 2x12's have stood in similar fashion through entire winters without coming down.

 

Well the wind really picked up then a evacuate now emergency alert came on for a town over the hill 5-7 miles away and finally the rain arrived. Probably aint gonna sleep to good tonight.
I ordered the Bishko for my year. Bishko's site set off alarms in FF so I searched Bishko CD with my year truck and they had it on ebay new for cheaper out of Ohio.

EDIT- they just canceled the evac order after 20 minutes of rain. Edit 9-27- They had an air tanker for the big fire east of here in the air and diverted it to fly over and that is what put an end to the danger.

 

Had the time and weather held today
The install was the easy part. Disconnect neg bat cable.
You have to remove the fan and belt to be able to rotate the motor using the balancer on the 3.9 to get to TDC. I suppose you could remove the shroud but if I remember correctly the fan has to come off for that anyway. Then remove the air cleaner and throttle body. Vac rubber hose broke and had a big crack it did not have when I did the MAP and IAC a few months ago. I used a silicon cap that was just over and inch long cut off the end and it fit perfect. Then remove plug wires and cap, disconnect cam sensor. Then loosen the hold down and remove it. If you can see and get in there now is when you would mark the shaft and motor. Not possible in mine. Too dirty and I could not get in there to do it. It cleaned up nice though and no signs of the plenum having failed back there.
When I removed it it was just as I remember the Bionic Dodge description of sync setting. I just put the new rotor on the new distributor and set it down in the slot. The body turned as I tried to tighten the hold down but the rotor stayed put as it is connected to that slot so I could just rotate the body back to the right position. I got it snug, put everything but the air cleaner back together, hooked up the MT2500 and started it.
Went to set sync and it was still jumpy as hell. lost of 24's + and - I eventually got it to hit 2 and 3 then jump to 15 and back to 3. And it just cycled that way so I left it. I tightened down the hold down bolt and took a drive. It felt tighter. It didn't drop in to OD too soon and felt stronger, not as much feeling like it was pouring gas through that wasn't burning. In fact as I write I realize there wasn't that exhaust smell of unburnt fuel in my driveway. I went and filled up hoping for better MPG's. 15.07mpg this fillup, up rom 14.5 last time.

 

Sounds like you're on the right path.

 

RwP