hugh
07-03-2007, 07:57 AM
My neighbor has a 67? Rambler convertible and he is going to install a rebuilt 304 in it. For now the 304 is in a Hornet and after sitting in his garage for approx 2 years he decided to break in the cam. He followed the precautions, pre oiled the motor, set the timing [it has a gm hei] filled up the rad and hooked up a temp and oil pressure gauge. The hornet is basically a junker that he bought to get some parts for a rogue convertible he has. So he is using it as a handy test bench for the 304. First fire up, got it up to 2500rpm and used the idle set screw to hold it there since there is no throttle cable and monitored it. She ran for about 10 minutes, sounded great and had good oil pressure about 40psi but the water temp got up to about 210 so he shut it down. Let it cool off and tryed a second fire up and it wouldnt light up. It has a brand new Edelbrock 600 cfm that has also been sitting for 2 years on the engine. Anyway during the attempt to get it started fuel shot up about 12 inches from the 2 float bowl vents that are beside the primaries. Then the gas in the carb caught fire but we were able to blow it out. We rechecked the distrib timing, it was ok and then pulled the plugs for a compression test. After the first fire up the plugs were the right color a light tan after the 2nd try they were all black from carbon and fuel. The compression was pretty much 110 in all cylinders so a sticking valve wasnt the prob. We tryed a few times to fire it up again but each time the result was the same, raw gas shooting up and then about half the times flame from the carb. Also a couple of good backfires from the exhaust system. Any ideas? maybe a stuck float. We ran out of time and the mosquitos were getting pretty bad so he decided to wait and try again later.
