Need some help finishing up my Skylark

I've always been weary of brakes. They worked fine when the motor popped all those years ago, hoping a flush/bleed will bring them back to life.

 

Bought a timing light on my way home today, wanted to get my feet wet and see if I knew what I was doing. Going to have to watch some more videos on that, dizzy doesn't seem to want to rotate far enough clockwise to move that timing mark enough.

Felt a bit of heat in the engine bay, top rad hose was piping hot. Walked over to shut the car off and the lower rad hose popped off, shot coolant everywhere. I put a 180 tstat (new in box from TA) in the other day. Could I have messed that up causing this issue?

 

Timing not advanced enough can cause it to heat up.

 

Well ****, guess I'll try again tonight

 

Pop off the distributor cap and mark exactly which plug wire it is pointing to. Then you can pull out the dist. and rotate the body a little in the opposite direction it needed to go to give you more room to turn it, then put it back in pointing to the same plug it was when you pulled it. That way, you can rotate it further.

 

Ah, now I'm starting to think that's why my distributor cap was facing the opposite direction initially. Hypothetically speaking the vacuum canister being 180 degrees from where it is now makes no difference as long as I have my cables set properly based off of the location of the rotor when I pull it (i.e. I pull the cap and it's pointing to my 6 plug, I put the distributor back in and the rotor is pointing in a new position, as long as I put my 6 plug where it's pointing)?

 

Also I'm thinking the car was overheating due to air in the system. When I installed the thermostat I drained the upper hose and a bit from the manifold. Ran it a bit after to make sure it wasn't leaking at the thermostat, didn't burp the system (new term I just learned after searching this forum). Going to put the lower hose back on tomorrow, fill the radiator back up, jack the car up, and run it with the rad cap off.

Also, my overflow reservoir has 2 ports on it. Bottom one is running to the rad, top one has a plug on it. Saw zero mention/diagram of that in my manual. Should that be running somewhere? It being plugged never stood out to me but now I'm curious.

 

Rotor should be pointing to the same cylinder before and after you pull it. Just need to rotate the body to give it more space to turn. As long as the distributor hose doesn't get into the fan belts or it doesn't obstruct something else, it doesn't matter which side it ends up on. What happens is that the distributor can only be turned so far before the vacuum diaphragm hits the block and won't turn any farther.

On the overflow, one goes to radiator cap area and the other goes down to drain. If you still have the clip on the radiator, the drain hose usually clips to the side of the rad, but it just goes straight down to drain under the car if the overflow overflows.

Sometime you can get an air in the cooling system that keeps water from circulating like it should. After I overhaul one, I usually have to keep putting more water in it over time as the air slowly gets worked out of the system, but I usually don't have them overheat. Always makes me think it is loosing coolant somewhere, but it is just taking its time working out all the air. There is probably some official way to get the air out initially, maybe someone else here knows a good way to do it. Without the cap, it may belch hot water all over the place.

 

Thanks for your help. I'm not sure if it was over heating as I don't have a temp gauge but I'm assuming so based on the rad hose flying off. It's either that or I forgot to get that clamp good and tight. Seeing as the car ran/drove without issues the last few times my suspicion is the thermostat, but I'll give it another go tomorrow and see where we land.