Please help me brothers. My car sat for a few months while i tried to find a sector gear. Found the part and installed it. I tried to start engine but it will not fire. Smelled the gas at carb and it smelled off. I drained most of the gas and added 5 gallons fresh 91 octane plus some sea foam. It will not fire up. I checked a spark plug I have spark, I checked carb I am getting fuel, I even used my brothers battery starter, it give 200A boost. Any ideas what I need to do? It just cranks and cranks but will not start. Thank you for all your help.
If you have fuel and spark, it should fire. The plugs are probably wet with fuel if not fouled. Ethanol gasoline absorbs water if stored for long periods, and it won't burn right. If you are running points, check the dwell, and also voltage at the coil + while you are cranking it. Should be 9 volts minimum.
It has HEI ignition. I will take all spark plug out, dry and re-gap them. What else should I look at? Thank you very much for the quick response and great insight.
I checked that. I dried all plugs, filed them and regapped them. Some had fuel in them. I think you much bad gas is still on the tank. I'm going to drain tank 100% then refill and try again. Thanks, I'll keep you posted.
Or if if you don't like starter fluid you can just dribble some good gas into the carb. Gas doesn't get that bad in a couple of months in my experience. My car sat for a couple of years, and still had no problem firing up from the "old" gas. It definitely ran better when that gas was gone and it got some fresh stuff ;~)
I tried the gas in carb trick. I have a new distributor coming soon so I'm going to try with that. Plus new plugs and wires, and fresh gas. I agree that seems fast for gas to spoil but it did smell off. Thanks for the suggestions.
Why are you replacing the distributor? If you have spark (hopefully you used a spark tester), the distributor is probably ok. It's probably flooded. Hold the accelerator to the floor and crank it over. This should crack open the choke to allow more air to the engine. Another trick to increase spark with a HEI ignition is to raise the plug wires on the terminals at the cap. Just pull them off and loosely set them on the terminals. Don't start replacing parts at random. You'll just create more problems.
Well I had already planned on replacing distributor with a D.U.I. HEI. Old one is not original and looks like it has a slight wobble at gear. I tried holding pedal down, it didn't work. I will try that plug trick and if it doesn't work I'll just wait for new distributor to come in and start fresh, then report back. Thanks.
Few sputters, it did backfire a couple of times either with fuel in carb or another time while cranking.
Timing chain hasn't been touched. Distributor could be 180 out, that's what a coworker thought. I made sure #1 was on compression stroke, found TDC, then placed distributor in pointing to #1. It did start after I did this months ago timing was just off and my timing light broke. When I got a new one the ignition cylinder broke then the ignition sector gear broke. So by the time all this was fixed it wont start. So I can check the distributor 180 again once the new one comes in but it should be starting now. Choke is not stuck closed. It is closed when cold and opens up as it warms. Once again thanks for all the help.
A distributor doesn't go 180* out by itself, it has to be pulled completely out and reinstalled that way. If the engine ran before, the distributor is in correct enough for it to run.
That's what I figured and told my coworker. That's what is so perplexing. It ran before although a little rough (just needed to be timed). I'll try again next week and see what happens. Thanks
