I need a hero

[DirtyDave72]

I'm a little out of my element coming here with a 1978 Ford Midas with 351w automatic tranny, 2150 motorcraft carb that started bogging out uphills to the extent of tapping the gas pedal like I'm dancing with the Stars just to keep the engine running. I know! I'll change the sparkplugs. No problem right? Ya right. I'm no king Midas when it comes to cars. That was last October. Got her started once, drove 10 miles and never started since. Ya, it's June 2017. When I took the plug wires off I didn't mark them. When I removed the old distributor to put in an ignitionless distributor I did not mark the base or the rotor or what cylinder the rotor was pointing to. I am self taught several times over in the art of TDC but I'm still not sure I did it right. (There are two timing marks. One looks an 1/8in. Wide x 1/8in. Deep mark painted white. The other is more like drawn on. Thinner and in between the balancer marks on the timing wheel.) This time this is what I've done: I bumped the dist., Till the air blew by. This put the thin line within the balancer marks past the timing marks by an inch. Over. So I slowly brought it around til the other, thicker indented mark came to about 6° before TDC. Then dropped in the distributor with the rotor pointed with my best guess of where the first cylinder was before. Now, it is as if the distributor only seats all the way down every other tooth. Like the oil pump at the bottom is off. But only every other one. I'm thinking maybe I'm supposed to be in one of the other teeth that the oil pump won't fit into. I've tried on each side of where I'm at already, that did fit. And nothing. It seems I'm not getting enough spark. The dist I now have has a built in ignition so I removed the coil and ran the hot lead to the dist. No? If not where do I run hot from? And should I attach a grand wire to the dist and block. She spudders once over and over but won't fire. I need a hero. I can send a good front and back of the nightmare.

 

[Bully Bob]

Hi Dave,
You're on the right track.

351 has a diff. firing order than a 302 if memory serves.
It should be marked on the intake manifold
The cylinder numbers need to be known as well.
(you may have to look that up)

Once #1 cylinder is known.., with the spark plug(s) out, you can rotate the eng. by hand
'til a puff of air (compression stroke) pushes your finger off the #1 spark plug hole.

With a flashlight and a stick.., you can set the piston to TDC
Then check to see if the timing pointer is lined up with "0" on the balancer.&
 ------ at this point, if it doesn't line up (or close).., you could have a bad balancer. -----

#1 should be marked on the dist. cap. The cap only goes on in one place (notched)
The wires go on in the order called out in the book
Pretty sure the rotor spins clockwise NO, IT SPINS COUNTER CLOCK but you need
to confirm that as well.

Set the dizzy with the rotor pointing at or as close to the # 1 pin in the dizzy cap.
If dizzy drops all the way down.., remove the cap & see if it is pointing to #1.
If not.., rotate dizzy 'til it does. (don't pull it back out) & then lock it down.
The dizzys are designed to rotate several degrees forward/backward for this alignment.

I may have a book calling out the specifics.., or maybe others on this board know them.
I'll take a look.

Cylinders are --from front-- 1234 on pass side. & 5678 on driver side.
Firing order is; 1-3-7-2-6-5-4-8 again.., counterclockwise. Assuming my book is correct.