Help with my 260! Not starting

So I was working on my car tonight and Ive ran into a stumper.

I have a 63 merc with a 260 V8. Ive swaped in a edelbrock 550 cfm 4bbl with a 2 to 4 adapter. It ran good back then, but never great, and the gas was old.
I just installed pertronix points and the flamethrower coil and rebuilt the carb.
The story is this:
The car sat for a long time, the gas got really nasty. I rebuilt the carb and cleaned out all the lime seaweed out of the bowls (seriously).
I emptied the gas tank and flushed it good twice with new gas.
I pulled the coil wire and turned it over with the fuel line in a bucket to get it all out of the line and then blew it out.
I put on a new filter at the fuel pump and a new inline clear fuel filter.
Bench tuned the carb and put it on.
It started up and it ran dreamy. It was a little rough, but it was definately holding its own and ran much better than it ever did before. I made a couple adjustments raising the idle so that i could time it.
Turned it off so i could loosen the dizzy bolt and moved the dizzy back and forth to check if it was loose.
Turned the key to time it. It turned over twice and then POOF! Big white smoke cloud out the carb. It shot the chrome breather cap out of my valve cover. Shot the plug out of a hose I had in the back of the manifold. Shot my dipstick 3/4 out of the sleeve.
Put it all back together and checked that my dizzy was as close to original position and tried again. no start.
Since then, Ive verified that I have spark from the coil to the cap, spark from the cap to the plugs. Checked two plugs on each side for fouling. I checked that Im getting gas and I am. Tried starting with starting fluid. nothing.
I dont get it. Ive had dizzys WAY out of whack, Ive had them 180 out, Ive had wires not connected before... but even with that, I would still get a cough or backfire or a shitty idle. Im not getting anything with this. Its like Ive got no spark... but I DO! I put on a spark tester with the inline light and it was bright and flashing.
It doesnt make sense to me if I have fuel and spark and pretty close timing why I wouldnt get a pop out of it.

Anyone have some ideas?

Anyone know what the deal was with the motor blowing out parts, as if it had a ton of built up pressure??

Thanks, any ideas or tips are appreciated

 

any gas in your oil? pull the dipstick and try to light it,if it burns you have gas in the oil,you may have gassed the plugs also to where they wont fire..........or you may have just fried the points,Im not familiar with the pertronix set up so Im just doing alot of guessing here......sorry .

 

hey thanks for the ideas. I pulled the plugs and none of them were fouled or even smelled of gas, which is kinda weird.
I just checked the timing and it looks pretty close to me! but it still wont fire!!

 

PerTronix is a points eliminator kit

 

Have you checked to see if you jumped time?

 

You might want to do a compression test too. And you might want to check and see if its pulling any vacuum, you may have blown your gaskets as well. Have lost the intake that way before.

 

ratatat, I dont believe I jumped time, or a tooth or lost a chain. I get spark to all 8 and I manually turned the motor to TDC and checked with the rotor to the #1 wire. I had to move the dizzy a bit to get it right on the money, but it was TDC

duste01, Ill do a compression test, not a bad idea. Will I be able to check vacuum without it running? Good tip on checking the gaskets. So far nothing on the bottom side was blown, no leaks.

Anyone else have some ideas?

 

Compression test will tell you alot about the internal condition of the engine, along with valve timing. This sure sounds like you have had a major combustion which traveled everywhere in the engine. Compression test first, then go from there.

 

General I'd be glad to help. Have you done compression test? are you getting fuel, do you have fire at the right time (can check while compression testing). Can you better describe. We can do this PM but may want to stay on the forum so the learning is saved.

 

with the breather off can you look down the top of the carb and see the accelerator pump squirting when you pump the throttle? I see dumping gas in the top doesnt help which is strange if starting fluid started it...

 

Does it try to start and just wont get going by itself or does it never try and just plain cranks? If it tries and just wont take off I'd advance the timing a bit and see if that helps

 

when you say you dumped a little gas in the top of the carb how much is that? Sometimes it take a bit more than you think. I usually use a Krylon spray paint can top full once or twice

 

At this point I would probably mark the distributor where it was at and advance it until it started hitting backfiring or something. I've seen that help stuff that has been sitting for a while. Anyone else have any suggestions?

Of course advancing the timing and adding fuel to the carb is a recipe for a fire. Just keep a big dry towel close by to smother it out...and you do have a good extinguisher, right?

 

Take a compression test. Running a engine with bad gas can cause a world of problems, mainly building up varnish on the valve stems causing them to stick open. Second put in a NEW fresh set of plugs ,as a fouled one will look just fine but will not spark in the engine.

 

My "no fire" problem was a carb issue. Heres the deal. It was a brand new Edelbrock that was put on an engine with a tank full of rotten gas. It was ran for a while and then it sat for a longer while, with rotten gas sitting in the carb.
I cleaned it out, but did a so so job, thinking it just needs a few blowouts here and there, clean it up and call it good. After racking my brain, it all pointed at the carb again. Same issues as yours.
Turns out, accelerator pump was working fine, it was the idle pick up tubes, they were both plugged with dried crap from crap gas. I rebuilt it again, and found this, and used a small paperclip end and reemed out all the shit.
It idles and starts awesome. Now I just have timing issues. I think its jetted to high, as its always running eyewatering rich, no matter what gets changed on the combo of stuff. And it falls on its face when put in gear. Im either chacing a vacuum leak or something else, but Im waiting till it warms up to tackle that again.

Good luck with yours. Dump that rotten gas, blow out the line, rebuild the carb and see where you are after that. Take out all your plugs and see if theyre wet with fuel. Sounds like with all the juice you pour down there, you could be flooding it. If you keep spraying the starter fluid after each crank or dumping gas down it, and it doesnt studder, youre either going to blow apart your muffler when it does catch (personal experience, LOL) or youre going to flood it. Maybe pull your plugs, let it air out a few hours and put in new ones. Just some ideas, good luck

 

Make sure you have that braided ground wire from the fire wall to the engine bolted down. Also, some of the the new fuel pumps they are selling in places like Auto Zone and O'Reilly's arms aren't long enough and won't work. Just compare them to an old fuel pump and you'll see what I'm talking about. Many 260 owners have gone to an electric fuel pump for this reason. I don't like using an electric fuel pump due to worries about a short and fire, but they do work well. I had same problems and fixing these two things got mine running.

 

Thanks bro! That was....oooh... 4 years ago, and have since given the car to a lucky HAMBer for free.
Welcome to the HAMB and thanks for tryin to help out. Just check the dates of the last post to see if its been a long time. Later!

 

Ha HA - I was thinking the same thing - that you probably had it running by now