silly timing question (how-to)

If it's standard shift there's a plastic cap on the top of the bell housing.
The there's marks on the flywheel and a pointer. You may need to unscrew the
outer plastic part to see the pointer.

JoBo

"Glenn Roesener" > wrote in message
36...
> Ok, this seems so silly. I normally work only on Air-cooled...but the
> daughter's home from college. I went to replace her cap and rotoron her
> '90 Jetta GL (1800 engine), and wound up dropping a piece of something
into
> the distributor. Long story short...I had to take the whole thing out to
> shake the silly thing out. Now I realize I have no tune-up data, and
can't
> find a mark on a pulley to save my life anyway. So...how do we set timing
> on a 1990 Jetta? It's 40 miles to the nearest auto parts store, so I'd
> hate to have to travel all that way just to buy a book today. Any help is
> deeply appreciated.

Ok, this seems so silly. I normally work only on Air-cooled...but the
daughter's home from college. I went to replace her cap and rotoron her
'90 Jetta GL (1800 engine), and wound up dropping a piece of something into
the distributor. Long story short...I had to take the whole thing out to
shake the silly thing out. Now I realize I have no tune-up data, and can't
find a mark on a pulley to save my life anyway. So...how do we set timing
on a 1990 Jetta? It's 40 miles to the nearest auto parts store, so I'd
hate to have to travel all that way just to buy a book today. Any help is
deeply appreciated.

"Jo Bo" > wrote in message
...
> If it's standard shift there's a plastic cap on the top of the bell
housing.
> The there's marks on the flywheel and a pointer. You may need to unscrew
the
> outer plastic part to see the pointer.

And you don't do it at idle either unlike most cars. That '90 Jetta (if
it's not a 16V) is probably Digifant. You need to set the timing at about
2500rpm so have someone in the car keeping up the RPMs for you.

This Is how I know to do it if it a digifant fuel system:

Warm car to operating temp, unplug blue coolant temp sensor at the top of
the block , rev car three times past 3000 rpm to clear computer, maintain
2500 rpm while viewing mark on the bell housing after removing green
inspection cover, set timing to +6 deg mark , plug sensor back in and you're
done .
> From: Glenn Roesener >
> Organization: TDS.NET Internet Services www.tds.net
> Newsgroups: rec.autos.makers.vw.watercooled
> Date: 19 Sep 2004 13:23:27 CST
> Subject: silly timing question (how-to)
>
> Ok, this seems so silly. I normally work only on Air-cooled...but the
> daughter's home from college. I went to replace her cap and rotoron her
> '90 Jetta GL (1800 engine), and wound up dropping a piece of something into
> the distributor. Long story short...I had to take the whole thing out to
> shake the silly thing out. Now I realize I have no tune-up data, and can't
> find a mark on a pulley to save my life anyway. So...how do we set timing
> on a 1990 Jetta? It's 40 miles to the nearest auto parts store, so I'd
> hate to have to travel all that way just to buy a book today. Any help is
> deeply appreciated.