I am glad you described your wiring and figured out that you have your batteries in parallel instead of series. All this does is gives you more cranking time. Had you connected them in series you would have been throwing 24 volts to your starter, and everything else, and it would have spun the hell out of it.

I have had to jumpstart my dad's 1946 which still uses a 6 volt system off of 12 volts before. It is not good on the electrical system at all, but it spins that starter like no other.

Anyway a new engine should be fairly tight and it is possible that 10.5:1 is too much for your starter. But you need to make sure that your starter is getting full battery voltage to it WHILE CRANKING. As others have mentioned a flaky ground will show up that you have 12v or very little resistance while you're not cranking but as soon as you try to throw a very heavy load across it, such as say the starter, the connection will get hot, resistance will go up, voltage will go down, and you get nothing.

Your starter should be grounded to the block and so too should your negative battery cable. If it is not, and is grounded to the frame, there should be some very heavy duty ground straps between the block and the frame and your net resistance from the engine block to the negative battery cable should be near 0.

 

Have ya got a manual trans? Make sure ya got spark and tow start it.

 

Actually I do both.

 

Just sayin' . . .

Back in the day of cheap, leaded high octane gas and high compression, I owned a '69 Brummett Mandella flat bottom v-drive boat.

It was powered by a Holman-Moody 427-8V side oiler that had 12.5 to 1 compression. When I rebuilt the engine, I put all of the specs on the tight side. It still managed to fire easily on a stock rebuilt Ford starter that came from Grand Auto. Engine had 18 degrees initial with a Vertex magneto. Battery was a Grand Auto battery, too. Type 24, if I remember right.

A stock Ford Starter should spin that puppy over with no problems. I think it's either ignition wiring or that starter is toast.

As far as an earlier comment about wiped out cams goes, the Govt. forced the oil makers to take out the pressure additives, so our Cat-cons and O2 sensors wouldn't get poisoned. That's why the cams get wiped out; not enough pressure additives to keep 'em alive before they break in.

Royal Purple makes a break-in oil with plenty of zinc and phosphorus to keep from wiping out a new cam. BTW, not a bad idea to use RP after break in. Their regular oil is very high in pressure additives.

Just my 0.02 USD.

Ray

 

You can have a 100 gallon oil pan, but at this point all the moly has been wiped off the lobes and lifters, so now it is all up to the oil splash to keep the lifters spinning and to achieve proper break-in.

GM EOS is the way to go for ZDDP additive during break-in, along with Rotella or Delo diesel oil.

Also want to make sure if running dual springs to remove the inner spring for break-in and then reistall them after.

Josh

 

So I went over EVERY ground and every connection. I wire brushed every terminal with a battery terminal cleaner and I think that was a big part. I put a good 1 gauge from the block to frame as well as the frame to firewall with bigger than ii mentioned before I went with 4 gauge for that. It now cranks really good!! I'm going bacl out in 2 secs to get spark. I removed that ground wire and I should have it running in the nect 1/2 hour.
As for valve springs I run a single spring with the proper spring rate for my cam. I saved on some machining costs and comp cam says its fine unless I plan to spin the motor at 6000rpm + which I dont...
I'll report back

 

Ok no spark. I dont want to crank this thing too long. I need to figure this out. I tried testing the coil as decribed on first page. NOthing.
Now testing coil do I need to have ignition power on to the coil of not while testing. Also what settings do I use on multimeter. I've got this...200,2000,20k,200k and 2000k. how do I do this??

 

I haven't read through all of this but off hand I'd check each batteries condition first. I had a bad cell in one of my batteries one time and it was doing exactly what you are describing.

 

batteries are good it cranks hard now. Just trying to figure out my coil

Ok heres the deal with my coil. I think i probably fried it the other day with that ground wire i had. So the coil that was in there is a threded top style not a press on type i hate those. I had a MSD coil at one point and it burnt out. I dont like MSD but it could be my crappy wiring skills. After that I went with a 11$ stock replacement coil which is in the truck now and it was for a points setup i guess. It is labelled on it "use with external resisotor" which i did not as with an electronic igintion setup you need a full 12volts vs what the stock points wire gives off after startup like 9 volts i've been told. What is the proper and best way to run this ignition.
Should I run a MSD again? 43$ at the parts store. Should I get another cheap coil.... and if so should I run a external resistor??? It seemed to work fine on my 390!

 

If ya suspect the coil than try the one off yer 390 if handy. I agree the coil ya grounded out is toasted.

 

In some factory manual "replace with known good component" is a valid diagnostic tool. if you have a known good coil from anything else put it on and try it. If that fixes your problem you can then buy a replacement of your choice.

 

I just had a good long chat with my engine builder. He's not a fan of MSD either and would prefer accel,or mallory same company supposivly. Anywyas he said the points coil "without" ballast resitor inside should be fine as I am running electronic ignition. He gave my a good tip on setting TDC as well. He said turn motor over until intake valve closes on #1 then turn over by hand slowly a little more butwith key igintion power on and a test light gounded and on the + side of coil, when light on tester flashes you'll be VERY close to TDC.. I'm going to get a new coil now

 

Just look at the balancer, after the intake valve closes bring the engine up to TDC, or better yet stop at 12-16 degrees BTDC and make sure the rotor is pointing at Terminal #1.

With key-on and a timing light attached you can twist the distributor to make the light flash, also verifying:

A) You have the timing roughly set
B) You are getting power thru to the distrubutor

You could do this with a test light as well, clip to the NEG on tach and ground, it should blink as you rotate the dizzy back and forth, key-on.

The warning for the coil is for continuous use, you want full battery power to the coil during crank, and around 6 volts during run, OEM set-up.

It will work temporarily in your case, to get the engine started, but will eventually cook with a constant 12+ volts.


Josh

 

No u want constant 12v with electronic ignition. U want less with points. This what he says and what my new coil says

 

I was referring to the coil you just installed that has the warning "USE External RESISTOR" i.e. do not remove the PINK OEM resistor wire. That coil cannot handle a constant 12 volts. It will work to start the engine and get it broken in, but will eventually fail.

Josh