Yeah, so I bought some MSD wires, and finally got to install them today. I quickly found out that they wouldn't fit cause of the headers, and, the idiot that installed my motor a couple of years ago didn't point the rotor at piston #1 when installing the distributor.
So I pulled out the distributor and went about correcting the problem. After putting everything back together (this thing is a pain in the @$$!!) the wires fit perfectly, and when I went to start it, it wouldn't fire. Alot of cranking and no spark. I checked a bunch of things, and found that the white wire (on the two wire harness that goes from the dist. to the coil {originally}) was broken at the base of the connector. I have the MSD dual connector coil harness, so I spliced a wire from the broken white wire to the white wire in the MSD harness. It finally fired, and ran, but very rough.

So, on the way home, it was sputtering, and running really rough, and it stalled every time I pulled to a stop.

I didn't use a timing light to correctly set the timing, but while it was running, I messed with the timing and no matter where it was timed, it still ran rough and stalled.

The only other thing that I did to the car was replace the brake power booster.

I did re-check all connections, and vaccum hoses and all seems to be correct. I pulled over and readjusted the timing and recheck all connections, and still the car dies. I feels and sounds like one or more cylinders aren't firing. I have to recheck all plugs to make sure that the wires are all still on them, becuased when I was installing the wires, I pushed really good, and still they didn't seem to be fully connected.

One last thing: I set up the dist. with 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2 clockwise, and the rotor pointing at the #1 cylinder.


Any thoughts??????

 

was your engine at top dead center on the compression stroke when you repositioned your rotor? Just moving the rotor doesn't put the distributor in time with the cam.

 

Sure you didn't do the classic 1-8-4-3-6-7-5-2?

 

"was your engine at top dead center on the compression stroke"

Yeah, the funny thing is that I had to reposition the dist. 3 times.
First time I thought that I had it one tooth before TDC. Alot of cranking and turning dist. with no fire. So I pulled it out, and repositioned it ahead one tooth. More crank and no fire. That's when I found the broken wire. But this time when I cranked the motor, it would only run with the dist. too far out, (wires wouldn't reach again). Then I pulled it back out and made sure that it was right on. That's when it was running better, but still really bad.



I'm pretty sure that I didn't swap 5 & 7 but I could be wrong. I used the # clips that MSD provides, but I may have inadvertently marked them wrong. I'll check that out.

But would that make it stall? When it stalls, it sounds like when you have bad gas, and too much timing and the motor diesels when you turn it off. Ya know, bluhphshhhh!! And also, it sounds like it's spitting back out the intake when stalling.

 

Sounds like maybe 180º out.

 

Ok, I'm a total moron!!
I forgot to mention that I had help from someone who, let's just say isn't any help at all!! I checked the wires today, and my friend swaped 4 & 6. Swapped them back, and wow!!!!!! this thing hauls!

Thank you all for your help.