POOF and the inevitable...."im an idiot"

[velociraptor]

been trying to figure out my timing issue for a couple of weeks and i think i got it figured out that both the vac advance and the mech advance are not working at all.

so today i set my timing in prep for the new dizzy im dropping in and for giggles i decide to take it out for a spin to see if the mech advance loosened up a bit.

big fat NO! on my way back to the house truck quit, dead, nothing. had to do the walk of shame the 1/2 mile and be towed home by a ...ugh....f*rd.

turn the key and the motor spins but no fire. hook up a timing light....no flashy. i suspect the soon to be lawn dart hei and proceed to start looking at wires.....burned wire to the bat side of the hei. to my disgust and anger the PO left the resistance wire on connected to the hei and the new coil/cap/rotor i installed gave off the test smoke and now im going to be doing a bit of wiring tomorrow as well as a new dizzy and starter.

any tips, pitfalls, small demons i should be watching for? motor is a 75 with factory hei, im assuming the rest of the wires in the truck are original.

[ChevLoRay]

I had an issue with my old HEI that I haven't seen anyone else have. Namely, the wire to the reluctor (pickup coil) in the distributor....broke. It wasn't easily found, but when I would let off of the gas, the breaker plate would move and the lead to the pickup coil would break, monentarily. As soon as it died, it would restart. That went on for a couple of months, with the adage that went, "If it ain't broke, you can't fix it" in my mind. Well, on New Years Day, it died...at a traffic light and I was first in line. It would crank, but not start. I had decided that I'd just replace the HEI with an ACCEL unit. That fixed it. It was after that, that we found the problem.

It's food for thought....

[velociraptor]

much appreciated, ive been fighting with electrical gremlins the moment i brought it home.

the vac advance on the current one does not hold vac and the mech advance is stuck and the weight holes are wobbled out, so time for an upgrade .

im hoping that only the resistance wire burned and all else is ok. if im correct the yellow wires coming off the starter i no longer need, just the purple and the new wire replacing the burned goes to the bat on the dist?

[s_nova69]

Yep u are on the right track.

I wouldn't know anything about burning through a wire that runs the dizzy. Not me.

I had a 78 w a mean 406 and I did all the work. Fixed everything that could be done when I put it in w a fresh 700 r4. One day I was headed to work a couple hours drive away at 5 am on the loneliest stretch of the drive and poofff. DOA. I had a few tools but couldn't figure it out. An hour later I ended up cutting a wire from something and running it directly from the battery to the dizzy. And weirdly enough it fired right up. Drove it to work and after found the main power line that comes from the starter fried almost in half.
Oh ya I have done that before.

The electrical gremlins will go away with dilligance and lots of swearing and hammers

Good luck
Posted via Mobile Device

[sir_talk_alot]

first i appreciate the blanking of the "o" in that nasty name, second, someone enlighten me as the the accel setup? im curious and dont know much about it. i have hei.

[velociraptor]

the new hei installed, #10 wire from fuse block replacing the resistance wire and the yellows removed..........still missed and ran horribly, it ran better but still gags trying to get power, turns out the carb is next on the file 13 list. PO only had 2....count them.....2 bolts holding the carb down on the manifold. the other 2 were just there for "looks" as they were snapped off in the manifold and they put them there to hide that fact. opened up the vac on the carb to get max vac tightened the 2 good bolts and viola.....runs like a champ.

what did you need to know about the accel set up? hei's are pretty easy to deal with.