Timing? 54 buick nailhead

[Noname38]

Poppin out of the carb... Shootin fire out actually had a small fire yesterday because of gas I spilled. I figure timing and Decided to go to top dead center n go through the firing order. Started off were the rotor was pointing. Went through it still poppin.... What I do wrong?

[Fraz]

Sounds like distributor is 180 degrees out. Quick way to find out is take plug wires and move them to the terminal directly "opposite" the one it is on and crank it over again.


Swap wires from one side of dist to the other, does that make sense?

[Jasonic]

That is exactly what I was going to say - same thing happened to me when rebuilding my 425. What do you have the timing set at?

[Brad54]

Happened on my '54 264 nail, and I still can't figure out how I did that. (I think one of the diagrams I used from either the Motor's Manual or the factory shop manual was wrong. Seriously. I don't remember the details, but when I finally broke down and took it to a shop, he told me the plugs were wrong, so they set it up like a 425 because they didn't have a book that went back to '54.)
It'll run 180 out, but like shit.
Let us know what happened.
-Brad