Set the timing 1974 beetle vw?

Answer 1

It must be done with a timing light. There are two ways you can do this, and it all depends on which pulley you have. First, hook up the timing light--red wire to the positive side of your ignition coil (nothing magical about using the coil, except it's a handy place to pull 12 volts from), black wire to a ground, inductive pickup clamped around your number-one spark plug wire. Get a 10mm nutdriver. Make sure you're not wearing any loose clothing. Take the car out of gear, set the brake, chock the wheels and start the engine. Go back there and hold your distributor in the left hand, the nutdriver in the right and loosen the distributor clamp. Put down the nutdriver, pick up the timing light, point it at the crank pulley and pull the trigger. If you have a stock pulley: there's a notch filed in it. Turn the distributor until it aligns with the seam in the engine case. If you have a "degree wheel" pulley--one with a protractor painted on it--the line five degrees to the left of the Top Dead Center line aligns with the seam in the engine case. Set the timing light down, pick up the nutdriver and tighten the distributor clamp. Now for the important part: On the side of your carburetor is the throttle arm. Pull it back toward you about half an inch and listen to your engine. If it accelerated smoothly, the engine's timed. If it kinda bogged down, you'll have to adjust the timing a bit. Volkswagen probably built 50 million of these engines, and every one of them times differently.