59elcooldsuv
Well Known Member
After years of saving up my nickles & dimes & buying one piece at a time, I finally have my 348 (1959- 250hp) ready for crank-up & break-in on the home built engine stand.
For lack of a battery, I pulled the batt out of the lil Ranger pickup (2.9L V6) and plugged it in to the wiring on the 348.
It cranks over very slowly but wouldn't fire. Every test I could think of seems to indicate that all my wiring is correct. The Pertronix unit with a ballast resistor has a wire from the 'start' circuit that temporarily bypasses the resistor while holding down the starter button. The timing light indicates that I'm getting hot volts at every spark plug. I checked the timing of the distributor several times.
What's buggin me right now is that it rolls over so slowly. Not like a dead battery, but maybe like a battery that's simiply too small for the V8. After trying for several hours to troubleshoot some other cause for not firing, I put the batt back into the pickup and it cranked up & ran immediately, so I guess the batt is good enough for the V6.
I guess my next trick is to take the battery out of the Buick and see if it cranks faster. If not I'll rig up my two sets of jumper cables from the running pickup to the Buick's battery in the garage and see if I get enough amps.
The initial tests with the compression tester don't look very good, but maybe that's a function of the engine turning so slowly. One thing I forgot is to squirt oil in the spark plug holes to 'wet' the rings before the first attempt. The good news is that I can't find any other reason for it not to run.
I hope I don't have to go out & buy a battery just to crank it up and break it in when I don't yet have a car to put this engine in.
Back to the drawing board.
What do you think?
For lack of a battery, I pulled the batt out of the lil Ranger pickup (2.9L V6) and plugged it in to the wiring on the 348.
It cranks over very slowly but wouldn't fire. Every test I could think of seems to indicate that all my wiring is correct. The Pertronix unit with a ballast resistor has a wire from the 'start' circuit that temporarily bypasses the resistor while holding down the starter button. The timing light indicates that I'm getting hot volts at every spark plug. I checked the timing of the distributor several times.
What's buggin me right now is that it rolls over so slowly. Not like a dead battery, but maybe like a battery that's simiply too small for the V8. After trying for several hours to troubleshoot some other cause for not firing, I put the batt back into the pickup and it cranked up & ran immediately, so I guess the batt is good enough for the V6.
I guess my next trick is to take the battery out of the Buick and see if it cranks faster. If not I'll rig up my two sets of jumper cables from the running pickup to the Buick's battery in the garage and see if I get enough amps.
The initial tests with the compression tester don't look very good, but maybe that's a function of the engine turning so slowly. One thing I forgot is to squirt oil in the spark plug holes to 'wet' the rings before the first attempt. The good news is that I can't find any other reason for it not to run.
I hope I don't have to go out & buy a battery just to crank it up and break it in when I don't yet have a car to put this engine in.
Back to the drawing board.
What do you think?