Hello everyone, I’ve been rebuilding my Dodge and doing a restoration, I bought a used motor and had the heads set out, long story short I got the the motor all back together got the distributer set to tdc and then tried to fire it, it ran for 5 minutes and ran awful and both headers started to glow. (I have the shorty headers on my truck). Once I noticed that, I shut the truck down and waited for my scan tool to come in to do the fuel sync. Fast forward to today I did the fuel sync and got it to about 0 but the drivers side headers, cylinders 3 5 7 were glowing still. Should it be more than 0 or less than 0? Is the cam gear off? I’m not really sure what’s going on so I thought I should come here to ask! Thanks!

 

Zero is the ideal, tolerance is plus or minus 7 degrees. What scan tool did you end up with?

Glowing headers implies you are running lean. So, either a vacuum leak, low fuel pressure, or you have three questionable injectors..

Gonna move this to second gen Ram section for ya. Welcome to DF!

 

Hey thanks for the replay and the welcome! I’m happy I found this! Is plus or minus rich/lean? If so which one is which?

I also just got the autel mx808 scan tool and it seemed to do the job! I’ll have to check for a vacuum leak and the fuel pressure to see what I’m actually getting. I did get all new injectors when I got the used replacement motor as I didn’t trust the old ones haha.

It’s very odd to me why the drivers side is the only side that’s still glowing. I did get the eBay special shorty headers haha but hopefully it’s something simple! The idle was up around 1000 too which could be a vacuum leak that’s causing this issue! I’ll check those out and get back with the numbers!

 

The distributor, hence, fuel sync, will have zero effect on rich/lean. It influences injector timing, that's it. (WHEN the injector fires, not for how long. ) Have a look at your fuel trims, see if the PCM is pulling fuel there.

 

Sorry I gotta harp on this again . "Fuel sync" is a somewhat misleading name, it does not control any timing, all timing is derived from the crank sensor. It merely tells the PCM which injectors to fire in a rotation :1-8-4-3 or 6-5-7-2. As HeyYou stated the adjustment is actually pretty forgiving with +/- 7 degrees. Also, on 98 up vehicles it is only used to get the engine running, the PCM just goes through the motions afterwards. (Fun fact: modern engine controllers don't even need a cam sensor signal they just change the injector firing until it runs. That's why those 1500+ hp engines in drag&drive events crank a little longer)

I agree something is running really lean there. In addition to fuel trims look at the O2 sensor readings maybe it tells you why the PCM is pulling fuel.

 

Might also want to check the wires, make sure they all are going to the correct cylinders.