How can you tell if a Distributor's timing is off? Help!?

Hello!



So I bought a 1995 Dodge Colt, manual transmission, at the beginning of the summer and had a tune-up right away, where the mechanic said all was well with the car. Throughout the summer problems revealed themselves and I finally decided to get the car checked again.



About two and a half weeks ago I took my car in to get a wheel rotation and asked the mechanic to also check the engine, as it didn't have a lot of power in it (it was so weak... so so weak).



He called me back and I found out that the bolt on the distributor wasn't on, letting the distributor distribute power erroneously. As a result, the timing was way off and when the sparks went off to give power to the engine, the pistons were already half way down, thereby giving little or no power to the engine (or something like that, I'm speaking out of very late memory).



My father thinks that the mechanic I took this car to at the beginning of the summer when I first bought it, either took the bolt on the distributor off, or ';somehow'; missed the fact that it didn't have one (which would make them a very bad mechanic indeed).



I'm very paranoid about mechanics now, and people taking the bolt off, and I'm obsessed about the power of the engine. When I got my car back from the other guy, there was a hell of a lot more power in the engine!



I've taken the car in since to get new wheels and an oil change and can't help thinking, ';Did they do something to the distributor? Did they?!';



So the BIG question is: How can you tell if the timing is off a distributor.



Thank you in advance!How can you tell if a Distributor's timing is off? Help!?
Lack of power.

Hard starting.

Backfire.

Poor fuel mileage.How can you tell if a Distributor's timing is off? Help!?
you can take it to a mechanic he can check it with a timing light, or you can rent a light and check it yourself, under the hood should tell you what the base timing is in form of degrees, most likely 5-12 or something. If its too far retarded, or not advanced enough, it will have low power and poor economy, advancing it too much can cause predetonation or knocking which means too much heat is built up in the combustion chambers, take it to a dealer and tell them to set the timing, I highly doubt the first mechanic even touched the ignition timing it was likely that way before hand and finally wiggled loose
Like you said you'd have a lack of power. Plus one old timer once told me on how to find out if you think something is out of timing or miss firing to put the car/truck in drive step on the break and the gas at the same time and if you hear a popping sound coming from the exhaust you have a miss fire. From there you trace it back from the spark plug to the distributor to the ignition control module (which controls timing). If any are out of wak then you'd see it being sluggish and miss firing.
What could of happened is that the bolt on the distributor may of not got tightened down and when the engine is running over a period of time it can vibrate out of the hole it came out of.The so called mechanic that did the tune up may of forgot to tighten it down when he may of got busy with something else temporary and forgot to tighten it.But what else can happen with timing is that if your car has a timing belt it can also jump timing if it is not replaced every so many miles like 30,000 is what is recommended.If you have a timing light look up the timing specs and check on it yourself to see where it is at.