Cylinder has spark but not firing..

duey_roc said
Pushrods are all straight. Ill have to check the lobes on the cam. It is the original cam i know. I did check it briefly when the motor was apart but i didnt really mic it up and stuff. Wat about that distributor gear? what if when i pulled the cam out it rotated just slightly... wouldnt that affect the timing slightly?

RustyRatRod said
Good GAWD. One step at a time. Compression seems fine. Do you have a volt ohm meter? Measure the resistance of the two wires on the skipping cylinders and see how they compare to the rest. They will be different because of the difference in length, but if they are stupid different then you have plug wire issues. Lets rule the simple stuff out first.

duey_roc said
Just thought id throw this in there too... I have points on this motor. Would this matter?

duey_roc said
Even if the motor came factory with electronic?

duey_roc said
Nope that's pretty much it man lol. I got the motor from a 78 Cordoba. The previous owner of the barracuda put a new points style distributor in it with new points cap and rotor. I'm converting to electronic tomorrow to see what happens. I planned on doing it anyways I guess now would be a good time

duey_roc said
And yes I've had this motor apart in 3 different situations. It's been kind of an experiment just to see out of curiosity. For example I wanted to know what would happen if you ran a solid cam on a hydraulic lifter. It actually worked but decided to switch to a stock cam. I've had the heads redone so I pulled the old heads and put the j heads on. I've had to take the intake off twice alone because of vacuum leaks. Then i tried running the motor with the stock 318 torque converter. That doesn't work because the 360 is externally balanced and I didn't have weights on the converter. So now I'm at this and I'm still learning. I've just never had this problem before. Gonna try converting to electronic ignition tomorrow and see what happens

gliderider06 said
You did not happen to leave rags or paper towels in the ports when putting it back together?

kman521 said
What is the resistance of the #2 and #8 plug wires?
Check the simple stuff first.

It is possible to have a plug wire that won't fire a spark plug under compression if it has too much resistance but you can still get a shock off it.

duey_roc said
Ill give it a shot man thanks! I dont think its a machining issue though because ive had 2 different heads on the motor and am having the same issue in both head sets. The only thing i havent actually fully played with is the intake.

Actually, now that i think about it, thats not it lol. I purposely mied the pushrods and lifters around in the engine too. (i know thats not recommended) I still had the same issue. Same 2 cylinders acting funny... Crazy lol

duey_roc said
lol cmooooon :cheers: No its a complete hydraulic setup in the engine right now. When i first got the motor, i put a solid cam in with the hydraulic setup just to see what would happen. It actually worked, but i was having this misfire issue so i went back to all hydraulic thinking that could have been one of the causes. :wack:

OK here we go!

You said that you have tried 2 different heads and nothing changed
Probably not the head.

You did not answer this question
Originally Posted by gliderider06

You did not happen to leave rags or paper towels in the ports when putting it back together?

have you replace you distributor or is it still point type dist?????

Have you invested in a vacuum gauge, or volt ohm meter yet?
You should,.... A leak down test is a good idea, but i don't thing you will ever buy on.

now let start with the vac. gauge.
I'm trying to get you to loosen a couple of bolts(half a turn only!) to see if the push rod is two long and holding up the valve while running.
With a vac gauge you can check this with out pulling the valve cover.
It can also tell if you have a vac leak causing a cyl to drop or not fire.

buy on, and i will show you how to use it for this and may other things.

Now for the volt ohm meter, a spark will still jump or spark out side the motor. but when under compression, it WILL NOT. if the plug wire has to much Resistance, the voltage will not be high enough to to fire the spark plug inside of the motor.

Now here is some stuff that I'm not so clear about so PLEASE help me out

#1 You said that you tried a hyd lifter on a solid cam or was it a solid lifter on a hyd cam????

#2 You said that you have the stock cam back in it now with the stock lifters...........did you install new lifter on the old cam or the original lifter back in the block

Now that i have side all of this: it will still cost you 0 dollars to pull the valve cover and loosen the back rocker shaft bolt on passenger side and front rocker arm shaft bolt on drivers side.

And just in case you didn't click on the link provide you.
I thing its is of value

Odd driver side, even passenger side. Attached Images

Happy holidays!!