timing adjustment problems

[stevetford]

Here is the situation, I bought this car with no motor so I can not say for sure this is a new problem or not. Anyways, the car is a 92 Talon tsi, manual tranny with eprom ecu and tmo stage 3 chip, MAFT and GM 3" mass air meter. I installed the motor which is stock with just an overhaul and have the car running but I want to check base timing to be safe. When I ground the timing adjustment wire and start the car, the car runs on 2 cylinders and of course will not stay idling. With the car running and I ground the terminal the car stalls. I was thinking maybe the timing was too far off so I adjusted the cas sensor and tried again, same problem....stalls. Also, this is being done with the car hot tranny in nuetral and a/c off just as the service manual says to do.
Anyone have any sugesstions or has had this problem before. Also, there are no codes and just driving around my development the car has no driveability issues. Thanks guys.

Steve

 

[kpt4321]

Two things:

First of all, if you have a datalogger you NEED to make sure that it is unplugged when you try to adjust the timing. A datalogger grounds out the pin in the diagnostics plug under the dash, and when both the diagnostics plug and the timing adjustment plug are grounded out the car goes into idle speed adjustment mode.

Now, as long as there is no logger plugged in, you just want to ground out the pin under the hood by the battery. As far as I know the only major effect grounding that pin out has on the motor is it removes the ECU's control of the timing. If grounding it out makes the idle change, that means that the car is doing something with timing in order to idle right. It's probably way off. Make sure the CAS isn't 180* out of phase, and make sure the timing is good. I'm afraid that's all I can say.

 

[stevetford]

I think you have hit the nail on the head. Yes I do have a data logger and I do believe it has been plugged in every time I have tried to adjust the timing. That is the last thing I would have ever thought of. I will give it a try tonight and see what happens. I appreciate the advice.
BTW, i know for sure the cas is not 180 out, learned that one the hard way some time ago so I bet the data logger is the problem. Thanks again