The last time the nailhead ran was before I pulled it from the 1966 Buick Electra 225 that I bought in St. Louis and moved to Vancouver WA to remove it and the TH400 switch pitch transmission and moved it to my garage in Arizona and painted it and the accessory front drive alternator and the tested radiator and new hoses and a new thermostat and installed the whole package with the transmission in the the frame with new motor mounts and transmission mount.
I prepared the engine for testing by pulling the plugs, putting some Marvel Mystery Oil in each cylinder and made sure the engine was free by turning it over by hand with a socket on the crank and a breaker bar.
I primed the oiling system with a drill turning the oil pump and check the pressure at 40lbs and let it run a few minutes while turning the engine over my hand again.
With that all checked out I found top dead center of the piston in cylinder #1 by turning the engine over by and with a stick touching the top of the piston that I could watch while rotating the engine. With the stick at the top of its travel I check the timing mark on the crank balancer and it was right on zero so I cleaned it off and painted it with some white one shot.
Next step was to check the compression so I rigged the battery to the starter and filled the moon gas tank with some high-test to see if the fuel pump worked too.
The compression in each cylinder looked OK and the fuel filter and carburetor were getting fuel and the accelerator pump on the carb was squirting so all I needed now was spark. With the #1 cylinder at top dead center I dropped in the electronic distributor and marked the cap where the rotor pointed as #1. I left the distributor bolt down tab a little lose so it would rotate easily for setting it timing when (I hope) she fired off.
I wired an ignition on/off switch nest to the temporary starter panel switch to power the ignition system and mounted the new coil and ran the new spark plug wires and installed new plugs and hooked everything up. I pulled the plug wire off of the #1 cylinder and turned off the fuel to the engine and tested to see if I had spark while turning the engine over with the starter and the ignition on
I removed the three bolts holding the transmission torque converter to the flex plate and made sure it was free of the engine.
Time to see if this puppy would run!
I got out the fire extinguisher and the starter fluid spray can and checked the oil and fuel filter again.
I rolled out the Sun Engine Analyzer that I bought last year form a High School Vocational Training program for $143 at the surplus auction and hooked up the timing connections, RPM, Vacuum and spark scope leads to the engine. So the moment of truth is at hand.
Need Suck, Squeezy, Spark and Bang
With Compression and fuel all I needed was an ignition spark at the right time and she should try to start. I installed the new electronic distributor, coil, and wired power via a ignition switch next to the temp starter switch and tested it all with my timing light, when I turned on the ignition and hit the start the coil wire high tension lead was firing the light.
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