Hi Guys,
Let me call on your collective knowledge for some basic repair solutions.
I have recently reconditioned my 69 351W with just about no stone unturned, or so the engine reconditioners bill would suggest… !
I replaced every thing as it came off, and there doesn’t appear to be any wires left over, a couple of vacuum lines i need to find a connection for but have blocked them off for the present time.
It spins over readily on the the key switch but doesn’t fire.
I checked the timing mark and im confident i don’t have the timing 180d out.
The timing mark is approx zero at the crank and the rotor arm is pointing to #1 lead at 1:00 a-clock as viewed from the front of the engine.
I checked and rechecked the timing for the cam supplied which was stock 351 timing.
I then checked for spark on #1 of which there was none ??
The fix for this stuff is alway something stupidly obvious but it alludes me so far.
any help will be graciously accepted.
PS:the 3 vacuum lines are coming out of the vacuum tree on the front of the manifold.
My sound dump, but is the rotor in the dist? Make sure all your coil/plug wires are pushed down completely in the cap and coil. Tall terminals especially can be a problem with this. I always push the rubber protector back and sometimes use a small screwdriver to push the metal terminals into the caps socket.
I put in a new tacho from rocket man not so long ago.
What was the issue with tacho effecting ignition ?
I thought the rockerman tachos had something added to prevent the non starting problem ?
First you need to determine why there is no spark @ #1.
Does the rotor turn when the engine turns over?
What ignition are you running?
If points, are they gapped correctly? Is the ground wire inside the distributor installed? Do the points open and close when the engine turns over? Make sure that the wire coming from the coil to the points is not grounding out.
Are you getting power to the coil + post when key is on and when key is in start position?
As long as you connected the original tach wires together you’re okay.
For future reference: An open factory tach will allow the engine to fire during cranking because of the resistor bypass wire from the I post of the starter solenoid. If it fires during start but dies when the key is released to the RUN position chances are the tach is bad.
There’s actually 2 failure modes to the factory tach. 1. The main interface to the wires is a transformer. When it goes bad, no current can pass through and you’ll need to bypass the tach for the engine to run.
2. The actual gauge guts of the tach fail, but the transformer still works. In this case, the engine will still run but the tach won’t respond.
