Yea.. im more of a hand gestures/physical action/get it done myself kind of dude, never been big on writen word to explain a problem so my appologies if my posts are a bit confusing at times. Lol but ill try my best to explain to you what went down and the history that lead me to it. (Keep in mind i bought this car as is from a guy who knew absolutely nothing about it, so in turn neither did i)
So after buying this 440 duster in south Seattle that barely ran, had leaky fuel lines, blew a foot of flames out of the carb every time i tried to turn it over, not to mention i dont make a lot of money.. i certainly dont have a problem saving up and spending it on the car it just takes me a long time to do it. Now i start doing some digging and some trial and error to find out what i can. First i want to acomplish getting the engine in well enough shape just to crank up with some effort at least and be able to drive it only for the purposes of moving it around for convenience, or to the mechanic if need be. So i think, #1 flames blowing out of the carb #2 i have to keep it reved up to about 2000+ rpm just to stay running... maybe its advamced timimg!? .. Or i have got a bent/leaky vale on one of my heads... that was the first thing i checked. Heads where good, looked damn near brand new (906 cast irons). Then i think well, it must be the distributor or timing gears. So last weekend i had some free time and decided what the hell ill take a look at the timimg gears amd see what i can see.... what i found?:
Took off the timing cover and used a tdc tool in the #1 cylinder (driver side front) to rotate my engine to top dead center. When i did that i looked at my distributor and the two little alignment dots on my gears. What did i see you might ask?.. the rotor in the distributor was pointing directly AWAY from #1 cylinder mark and the alignment dots where all out of wack! One up at the top left and one pointed straight left.. after seeing that and getting the same thing after roatiating the motor in the SAME direction back over to tdc again just to be sure i wasnt wrong, it came out the same way every time. So what did i do?:
Well, i took off the timing gears (witch was in fact a damn near brand new double roller set) rotated the motor to tdc, and put them back on with the alignment dots in the proper position, it slid right into place. (Fyi i never rotated anything without the gears AND chain being on)
Next step was to turn the rotor in the distributor to #1, so i unbolted it, slid the neck up until the gear came loose, then turned the rotor to #1 sat the neck back down and gave it a little wiggle locking it into place... and thats pretty much that. I put my timing cover back on, pulleys, fan, radiator, made sure ALL of my plug wires were snug, checked all my lines... everything was good. So we hooked up the jumper cables, cranked my buddies truck, let it sit for a few minutes then tried to crank it...... anddd nada.
It will spin the motor over (wee-e-e-e-e-e) but it just wont fire off and start up.
Im no mechanic, but this is my hobby, something i absolutely love to death so i like to try and do it myself rather than take it to a mechanic so that i can LEARN it, get better at it. If there is anything in that prosess i missed or maybe something i could try to get it running, pkease let me know. I appreciate all the help everyone on this site is willing to give. Thanks!