Sorry for the delay getting back. I've been busy with some other stuff and just got a chance to get back working on the car yesterday. We picked up the tank with the new liner and reinstalled it in the car. One of our friends told us that based on the symptoms, he thought the distributor was timed 180-degrees out. So, we rotated the distributor 180 degrees, set the static timing at 10 degrees BTDC, checked the tank and fuel lines for leaks and tried to start it again. Nothing. Pulled a plug and turned it over to find nice bright spark. So we reinstalled the distributor 'properly', reset the static time to 10 degrees and tried again. Engine fired and stumbled for a few seconds and then we shut it off. Tried adjusting the time +/- 10 degrees but that didn't help. Engine seemed to run (at least it would slightly speed up) if I played with the accel pump squirters to feed fuel into the carb. Pulled a plug. It looked (and smelled) pretty dry. Tried all this again, and same thing. So I began to suspect the idle circuit in the carb might not be working properly. Pulled the primary bowl and metering block off and cleaned everything. It looked like new and the jets were clean. Cleaned with carb cleaner and blew all passages out thoroughly before reassembling. Tried again...same thing. Now I'm trying to figure out what to check next.
I've read the past posts on this forum about the MSD units and how to check them. I also checked the instruction on MSD's website. If I try to check the unit like they say using a jumper wire to short the mag. pickup wires on the MSD, I get nothing. But if I check spark by pulling a plug and cranking the engine over, I get a nice bright blue spark
. So, I don't know if this is an adequate check or not with the MSD 6AL box I'm using. I'm also using the Accel distributor that came with the car which is pretty old and uses a GM 4 pin pickup that I replaced last time we had the car running. If this pickup was bad again, I would not see any spark, correct?? I'm trying to figure out the next logical step and I'm leaning towards trying to bypass the MSD box and wire up the distributor and coil (maybe even the
oil cool, too) normally, without the 6AL. To be clear, the 6AL, MSD blaster coil and all the wiring is brand new. If the battery voltage being too low is the culprit, this should be a good test for that as well, correct? Thanks for the continued support guys! I know I'm close to getting this figured out and with your help she'll be running in no time
Mike