i redid a head and swapped it out, everything is clean, and i was very careful at marking all of my stuff so i knew how it all went together. the valve timing should be spot on, it doesnt knock or anything, and i have spark. the haynes manual says that my distributor has angled keyways so i cannot put it in 180 degrees backwards like i thought i may have. next i checked fuel........the car has fuel. i tried to "choke start" it with the throttle full open, all that did was make a flame shoot out of the throttle body. i'm stumped. something is off, wether it be ignition or valve timing, or something stupid like i vaporlocked the system, and the flames were just something left in the cylynders when i put it back together (it had it PERFECTLY clean when i assembled it)

so what could it be? the flame was slow burning, not like hwen you burn gas, i'm thinking maybe i had a little carb cleaner collecting somewhere in the head when i cleaned the gasket mating surface, but i dont know. either way, it's got spark, it's not knocking like the valve timing is off, and apparently it has something in the intake manifold capable of shooting fire out of my throttle body (i hope that would be fuel haha)

help me out! i could check the ignition/valve timing but i dont really know how to, the way i did it was the way the haynes manual said, and a little bit of paint pen work to make sure everything went together the same way i took it all off!

thanks for any replies, if anybody knows how to get this thing to TDC on cyl 1 or w/e and knows how to check ignition and valve timing, pls leme know

 

pull the rotor on the dizzy and see if it came loose or maybe its 180 degrees off

 

UPDATE::::

I turned my dizzy 180 degrees and my car started! (thansk for the info, my haynes manual says it can only go in one way, but they are wrong!)

Now, my car sounds like it's got a cam in it. i've turned the crank with no plugs in it to see if valves are hitting, they are not as far as i can tell by turning the crank. the car doesnt knock, it just runs like the timing is way off. i run it up over 4500 rpm and the check engine light comes on, and it retards my timing and the car loses rpm. so i go back to check everything, it all looks right to me. when i turn the car off and back on, there's no check engine light unless i go over 4500 again. wtf am i doing wrong here????

 

glad i could help!

 

did you set your ignition timing with a timing gun?

did you pull the code?

 

on the timing.........no and no. i dont have the equipment for that. i set everything back to where it was before i did the swap.......guess that isnt good enough. i am getting oil in teh distributor cap, i think i need to replace an o-ring on the dizzy near where it connects to the cam.........any insight?