Slant six starting woes...

[bill dedman]

Originally Posted by bill dedman

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It still doesn't RUN, but it's getting healthy spark, now FINALLY!!!

What was wrong that it had NO spark???

Turns out, the points in that point-type distributor had an affliction that I can't explain, but here's what it was doing: When the points were CLOSED, there was NO electricity passing from the "hot" side of the contacts to the other side. NONE. How that is possible, I do not understand; I had filed the contact area of both sides of the points , wiped off all the filings (loose stuff that resulted from the abrasive) and gapped them to .015".

I set up a test light to check continuity, not expecting in a million years to find that there was NO electricity passing between them when the were closed.

Could NOT believe my eyes, but a new set of points worked as it should, and all of a sudden, the make/break function (now operating correctly) had my coil shooting a really healthy spark, just like it should have all along.

Dang....

Now, all that's left to do is properly time the distributor for correct spark advance, and I can put this sorry episode behind me.

Thanks much to the many people who took the time to educate me on the many facets of the problems that could have caused this anomaly.

50 years of working on cars, and I had never seen anything like this...

Tomorrow, we can break in the cam. What a thrash this was...

But, that's hot rodding....

So, today we broke in the cam, fine-tuned the advance and carb mixture. Runs like a decent engine, now,

Now, we can get on with the bidness of installing the headers and turbo, and build the cold-air plumbing.

Sure is taking a long time...