1994 Sierra 1500 stalled in road and won't start

[simonphelps08]

OP is conflating the belt and the harmonic damper. In his mind they're one and the same. From now on, if he types "belt", think "damper & pully"

OP. Serp belt goes around a pully. Pully bolts to harmonic damper. Damper has a groove. Timing marker has 1 deep notch that denotes 0°. Line up the groove with the notch with the timing light as described above.

ʻAʻole pilikia, buddy

The fact that you picked up on this made my day more than me miraculously finishing the truck yesterday. Yes, to me I just thought they were connected...the same thing. So, Although I would like to share a photo of the mysterious "belt" I'm afraid I will have to direct everyone to the comment quoted above.

I did everything mentioned above and I think the truck may sound smoother than it did a couple weeks ago before it stalled on the road. I'm so excited that I could fix this and I know I couldn't have done it without everyones help. I'm a hands on learner. As I was doing all that I was told it made sense. It was all very straight forward but until I was out there doing everything myself I was confused and it didn't make sense.

There was one other thing I wanted to mention. I think there was some confusion about me not being able to get a distributor cap and only being able to get the entire set up. I think I remember a comment about people thinking that was odd. For Kauai this is common place. If the store doesn't have it, you don't drive down the road to get it somewhere else. To make matters worse, our island has been closed off to the rest of the US since April. That makes things trickier as well.

Regardless, Mahalo to all

 

[618 Syndicate]

Glad you stuck with it, and are able to feel the satisfaction of learning.

 

[thinger2]

IIRC it's a black/tan wire and on the 94/95 years it's behind the glove box below the PCM.

Yep. Mid 94 production change that never made it into the service manual.
Even the dealer techs didnt know about it untill it was corrected through a TSB.
Sometimes that wire got taped up into the harness so you might have to search for it

 

[thinger2]

The dist caps on these can be a pain to get them seated properly.
Always back the screws out untill they are clear of the plastic alignment pins like this

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Then wiggle the cap around till it seats on the plastic pins and hold it down while you tighten the screws.
I also never use anything but a 1/4 drive nut driver with a socket taped to an extension to tighten the screws.
Those screws can snap off pretty easy.
If they do break, you can get them back out without pulling the distributor but its kind of a ***** to do.
Get a really small pair of needle nose pliers and grab the stub of the screw that sticks out on the bottom of the dist. plate.
Keep turning that screw out the bottom of the plate untill it drops out.
Ask me how I know this!
Good job tracking down the problem

 

[thinger2]

A couple of other random distributor thoughts.
Make sure you remember to use the gasket.
Aftermarket distributors often come with a paper thin gasket that can make the distributor feel a little "wobbly" when you tighten it down.
This is because the dist. is bottoming out in the oil pump drive before the
bolt tightens all the way.
You can get thicker gaskets and correct the problem
As I recall the Felpro is at least twice as thick as the Chinese one.
After you get it running, keep an eye on that gasket to make sure its not blowing oil out.
And, for the long term, go online and see if you can get a good quality distributor hold down wrench.
The 2 piece ones from the part store suck

 

[simonphelps08]

Hey guys I'm back with hopefully one last question. It appeared everything was good on the truck but when I started it the other day it sputtered quite a bit like it wasn't getting enough gas and the rpm's were really low like it was gonna stall out. It still got me all the way home from work but the sputtering was similar to the sputtering it did right before it stopped working. The sputtering also wasn't present all the time.

I used the timing gun and found the mark to be off quite a bit. There are only 3 notches of if there were more it would be 9-10 notches counterclockwise off. So, I disconnected the wire by my glove box and readjusted.

While rotating the distributor, It seems I cant go clockwise past the big notch marking 0 at all or the truck starts to try to stall. (Not that I need to do this but I thought it might be valuable info. When I first went through this process the line was on the clockwise side of the large notch and didn't sound like it was about to stall out.)

Could the distributor and crank damener need to be readjusted to being in sync? IS something else wrong?

 

[RawbDidIt]

Hey guys I'm back with hopefully one last question. It appeared everything was good on the truck but when I started it the other day it sputtered quite a bit like it wasn't getting enough gas and the rpm's were really low like it was gonna stall out. It still got me all the way home from work but the sputtering was similar to the sputtering it did right before it stopped working. The sputtering also wasn't present all the time.

I used the timing gun and found the mark to be off quite a bit. There are only 3 notches of if there were more it would be 9-10 notches counterclockwise off. So, I disconnected the wire by my glove box and readjusted.

While rotating the distributor, It seems I cant go clockwise past the big notch marking 0 at all or the truck starts to try to stall. (Not that I need to do this but I thought it might be valuable info. When I first went through this process the line was on the clockwise side of the large notch and didn't sound like it was about to stall out.)

Could the distributor and crank damener need to be readjusted to being in sync? IS something else wrong?

Did you tighten down the distributor after you set to 0*? If not, it probably just moved out on you. The light will be so over the place with that plug connected, that's why you disconnect it before setting timing. That allows the computer to adjust timing based on input from other sensors.

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[simonphelps08]

Did you tighten down the distributor after you set to 0*? If not, it probably just moved out on you. The light will be so over the place with that plug connected, that's why you disconnect it before setting timing. That allows the computer to adjust timing based on input from other sensors.

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Yes, I tightened after setting to 0... and Yes, the first thing I checked was to see if the distributor moved. It was still secure, so this wasn't the problem.

 

[RawbDidIt]

Yes, I tightened after setting to 0... and Yes, the first thing I checked was to see if the distributor moved. It was still secure, so this wasn't the problem.

You mentioned the timing with the wire connected, how far off was it when you disconnected the wire?

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[simonphelps08]

You mentioned the timing with the wire connected, how far off was it when you disconnected the wire?

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The very first time about a week ago? It was about 6 notches clockwise. (there aren't notches so I'm just estimating) I then adjusted to 0, plugged the wire in and drove around for about 15 minutes. I then checked timing again to make sure all was well and it was still on 0. Then I drove to work one time this week (about 40 minutes) and everything was fine. When starting the truck to come home it started being weird. I checked everything when I got home and it was about 10 notches counterclockwise.

I hope this makes sense.