Hi Moses,
Sorry for the delay, I had to go home and my friend lives 4 hours from me. I’m relaying messages to him and he is trying to find time for diagnostics.
We have verified the timing mark on the balancer is within an inch or so of TDC when the piston is on the compression stroke for #1. It’s hard to find exact TDC on #1 with the head on but we are close.
I’m working on a theory the balancer mark is off on the front pulley, which would cause the distributor to be in the wrong place. I had my friend monitor the location of the pulse generating notches on the flywheel compared to the harmonic balancer mark and the rotor in the cap. From what I’ve read there are 2 sets of 4 notches on the flywheel for the crank sensor and the coil fires on the training edge of the 4th notch, which is at 4 degrees before TDC.
“The notches cause a pulse to be generated when they pass under the sensor. The pulses are the input to the PCM. For each engine revolution there are two groups of four pulses generated on 2.5L 4-cylinder engines. The trailing edge of the fourth notch, which causes the pulse, is four degrees before top dead center (TDC) of the corresponding piston.”
I downloaded a photo of a Jeep flywheel and marked it up to show approximate locations of timing events. If you look at the table in the photo you can see by the time the 4th notch gets to the sensor we are way past TDC and the rotor can be firing either plug 1 or 3. The timing mark is about where I saw it when I was using the timing light on the number 1 plug. When my friend finds some time he is going to remove the balancer bolt to see where the crank keyway correlates to the timing mark on the outside edge of the pulley. I don’t know exactly how far apart they are supposed to be but from photos I’m guessing about 45 degrees. If it looks way off we can compare it to one at the auto parts store.
Lastly we did verify proper grounding and we will check the sensor resistance. I will let you know what we find.
Thanks,
Mike