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We had the truck humming along for 30 minutes, my son drove it around the sub - having only the cab in prime installed - he was quite the sight! First gear, nice and easy. We pulled the dist off and removed the RF filter per Charles idea - straight positive wire to the dist. We dropped the oil pan and scrapped out the 50 years of sludge, added fresh oil and filter.

We cranked with no firing. We cranked and got a small back fire thru the exhaust. We cranked again with some starter fluid, small back fire in carb. We pulled a spark wire and could see we had spark. We took the dist top off and check the wiring, no problems. The retaining bolt lined up with the paint marks but could be off a hair.

Is it possible that we rotated the dist shaft 180 degrees off or something equally dumb?

The drive tang on the stock distributor is offset. It's impossible to put it in 180 degrees out of sequence. I'd suggest checking to make sure you have your firing order correct. It's surprising how easy it is to get 'em on the wrong plug, even when you know what you're doing. Once you know that they're correct, you can try advancing and retarding the spark by turning the distributor a little either way and see if she'll fire up. Let us know what happens, and we'll take it from there.

Wait a minute! You said you had it running for 30 minutes or so, so I'm guessing that the firing order and timing were okay.

Then you mentioned removing the RF filter! Maybe you missed something when you put that back together??

Lifer - thanks!

We ran the engine for a good warm to re-torque the head after installing a new gasket. We figured we would dump the oil after that.

We had installed the electronic ignition from Charles prior to the warm up, so everything worked fine. We pulled the distributor afterwards to remove the RF filter while we had the engine down for the oil pan work/head re-torque. We pulled the positive wire/RF wire out. We pulled a new wire to the positive term of the coil, thru the cannon connector, and terminated it with a packard connector. The positive coil has this lead and the red wire from the ign. The black wire connected to the neg coil. We double checked that last night without removing the dist.

To re-torque the head, my son removed and labelled each wire 1-6, pulled the plugs, torqued, and reinstalled. We assumed no spark, but pulled the #2 plug wire and could see the ark to the plug. Then we figured no fuel, so we blasted some starting fluid into the vent tube. Backfire.

We are running the engine connecting the positive #12 ign/dist wire to the 24v batteries, and a one gallon by-pass gas can. I'll double check the wiring - figured tonight. ODD eh?

Yep! Don't ya just love chasing gremlins?

Per your description, your module & #12 lead are wired correctly. Honestly it sounds like a timing issue, since you mentioned having the plug cables off for retorque, I would look carefully at them. From what you have said, it sounds like one or more may be on the wrong plug.

Ummm, Charles! If ya have one of 'em on the wrong plug, it stands to reason that you've got at least two of 'em that way, don't ya think?

Lifer wrote:Ummm, Charles! If ya have one of 'em on the wrong plug, it stands to reason that you've got at least two of 'em that way, don't ya think?

Absolutely, at least 2 would be involved. I was hurridly typing at the last minute during lunch break. I actually thought about that it sounded rediculous, but didn't take time to redo it, had a busy afternoon.

I'd take everything Charles has....even on his worse day... he far exceeds any knowledge threshold that I hope to achieve!

Thanks for the info - we took the vent lines off, and pulled the top of the dist. We eased the dist out about 1/2" and rotated the shaft 180 degree. Put it back together and away we went. We assumed that we had marked the wire correctly leaving only the shaft. Lesson learned is to mark the location of the shaft to the housing prior to pulling it!!!

It really was 180 degrees out of time, huh? Odd. Unless you have a lot of slop in the distributor shaft, it shouldn't have gone back in that way. I'm guessing that either (1) someone has switched to a civvy shaft and oil pump or (2) you're seriously in need of new bushings in your distributor housing. Oh, well...that's a job for another day. At least it runs again!

It shouldn't have went in 180 degrees out, but we've had more than 1 here that would. You would think if that happens excessive slop would have to be an issue, however that isn't true either. We've had some that would slip in 180 degrees out just as easy as the correct way. Oddly enough, there isn't badly worn components in every case when it happens. One of those things you scratch your head over I guess.

The end of the shaft was a perfectly rectangular machined end - symmetric about the end. The same for the mating slot. We took a peek from under the engine when we dropped the oil pan. No signs of wear - anywhere. The dist shaft itself had in/out slop as Charles had provided in the instruction sheet - but no side shimy. We would have thought that the end would have been tapered or key-wayed to prevent mis-installs.

We did not remove the oil pump for inspection because we could see up from the bottom of the block.