cranks, got spark, fuel pressure at the rails, and volts to the injectors. brief history of this repair: replaced lifters, rods, rockers, and of course, all new gaskets. got a fuel pressure problem not holding once primed, but holds during cranking. had no spark, too, but rebuilt dist with all new parts and new coil. now i got spark and fuel. however, it won't start... i suspect that i inadvertently got the dist 180 out, even though i thought i was careful to go around twice every time i had to roll it over, in order to stay at #1 tdc. but i mighta' missed it, so... what are the symptoms of a dist being 180 out? no start and couple of backfires? cuz that's what i got. when i rebuilt the whole engine originally, it started right up first time, no problems. this time, don't know what the heck, but again i suspect the dist out 180... any other ideas? but at least i got to try to start it today...

 

Pretty much...

Take out the #1 plug, hold your thumb over the hole, have your lovely asssistant bump the motor over with the starter until you feel compression. Bring the piston up near TDC, looking in the hole. That's #1 firing. Make sure the rotor is pointing at the #1 tower on the cap.

 

will do. mighta' missed the mark by a tooth, too. i'll just reset #1 tdc and see what happens... thx.

 

If it's out 180* you will get an occasional "sneeze" through the intake, but it won't start.

Take out # 1 plug and put your finger over the plug hole. Bump it over a wee bit at a time. When you hit the compression stroke you'll feel it. Roll it over to TDC manually and make sure the rotor is pointing roughly at the #1 terminal. Remember that by TDC the spark should already have fired so it should already be a smidge past the terminal. So cranking the distributor body back and forth from there in farily large amounts will eventually find a point where it fires up (assuming you have the wires going to the proper plugs). Get it fired up and then set the final timing per the usual procedure.

When first firing and engine it is FAR better to be over-advanced than it is to be retarded.

 

yea, that's pretty much the symptoms i had - but now get this - i have ZERO compression. attempted to do the "finger over the hole" check, cuz i was pretty sure the dis being out 180 was the problem, but now the problem is that i can feel no compression and when i put a gauge on it, it doesn't even register. WTH?!?!?! that CAN'T be normal on a rebuilt top-end... so, here goes yet another post...

 

Sounds like the rockers are too tight.

You must have used the "twist the push rod between your fingers" method, instead of the "jiggle the push rod up and down until the slack is just barely all taken up" one.

Back all the rockers off 2 full turns and check compression again. If you get it, then set up the distributor accordingly. Then go back and re-adjust the valves as described here https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tech...wap-got-s.html in post #2.

 

This method is recommended by Crane Cams which have seen afew cams.

http://www.enginebuildermag.com/Arti...r_preload.aspx

 

Exactly: excellent article, except, DON'T DO THIS PART OF IT RIGHT HERE:.

Bad. Doesn't work. Quite possibly was what got you where you are right now.

Instead, jiggle the push rod up and down, just until the play is just barely removed. Much less prone to the over-tightening error.