Dirty plugs

No help I'm afraid but I have the same problem as you...!!!!! If I can sort it out I'll certainly let you know.

let me know what you find out too.

What are you driving?

An 1986 3.5 EFI. New coil, ign, amplifier. dist. cap, rotar arm, leads. Plugs are black but fairly new. My next trick is to change the plugs before doing the timing. Fun Fun Fun................

I have checked and the advance on my dizzy is not working and there is abit of play in the rotor shaft , I wonder if its that????

I am trying to get another one at the mo but am dubious of secondhand ones as you never kow what you are getting!

Alright Fett, Just read through this thread after being offline for a good while.
If you have a lil play on the shaft, it might be a bobweight loose in the dizzy matey.
I had this trouble when i first got my 3.9 Classic and it turned out to be bob weights loose in the dizzy. Not a hard job to do if you know roughly what your doing, i didn't at the time but have learned a good bit about it since then. Just a very fiddlely job.

Is there no one close by with a timing light gun? Also just found out how to check the timing, doddle when you know.Scary when you dont.

Thanks . I am thinking of a new or used dizzy as the vacume unit is also shot. But fitting it -yes a bit scary as I have no idea how to time it.

I was thinking of my local garage to put it in as if it only 1/2 an hours labour then its there problem for £20

Perhaps we do have the same problem after all. I took out all of my plugs to check the gap etc and found the right hand bank were all wet after 24hrs of no action. All the plugs were also black. She started up right away and I put the strobe on her to set the timing, running a wee bit rough but got her timed. Then turned off the engine, got ready to take her for a run and no start..!! but lots of petrol smell. Methinks flooding, from leaky injectors???? no idea. Sounds quite similar to you though.

I just set my timing and a note here for you. By sucking the vacuum advance I could get the plate to move a wee bit but when using the strobe and unplugging/plugging the vacuum advance I could see a large difference in the timing. So perhaps your v/a is alright. I'm going to try a new pressure reg. next...!!!!