Hey all,
Got a 1985 Aries, 2.2L injected. Auto Tranny 4Cylinder.

Car seems to run fine when in park or whenever there's no load on the engin. Put it in gear and you need to be VERY gentle. If you so much as just give it a tad too much on the peddle it just starts to bog out and will eventually sit at a standstill and fire like one cylinder and spit and sputter. Put it in neutral and slam it to the floor and it'll straighten out in about 10seconds and run fine. Put it back in gear and ease off again and it'll be fine. Same problem will happen once again if you just happen to give it too much pedal. If I slam the tranny down a gear and the RPMs pick up it will go just fine. Seems to only bog out if the RPMs are under 3000.

My GUESS is timing but how the crud can I do a quick "backyard" adjustment? I was told to just take off the distributer and losen a screw on the rotor and turn it just a tad and see how it would react. Alas no screw on rotor so obviously not a good idea.

Any ideas?? At this point by the end of the week I'm gonna take a sledge to the engin if I don't get anywhere with this.[:@]

 

First off, Check your timing, set cyl #1 to Top Dead Center and check where the timing mark on the cam pulley is at. (to get Cyl 1 to TDC use the window on the trans..Will provide pix if you need help finding this). Check your spark plugs, oil, and trans fluid, If these are low they could cause problems. IF you decide to try and adjust the timing by the distributer its very simple; there is a bolt with something that looks like a square washer on it (belive its a 14 or 15mm head) will be on to the right of the dist. if you are looking from the front just loosen that a bit and you can turn the dist. to try and correct the spark timing. Ive doubt with timing on these motors so its pretty easy for me, but is a pain to learn...If you need more help just post