So I have this 68 f250 camper special that ive been going through for a couple years now and just this last winter I yanked the original 360 Fe (completely original) and started to rebuild it. I had it checked for cracks and any damage or warping on block and the heads, I had it tanked cleaned and machined. I had it bored .030 over, new springs and valves in the heads,cam bearings installed, and I had the whole rotating assembly balanced. I then assembled it myself Going over every detail and spec I could find and following all the procedures I had learned from school and lots and lots of videos.
The assembly went great everything fit and worked. I also had the transmission rebuilt by a professional and both engine and transmission installed perfectly with no fuss. I went to break it in and I got it to run pretty well for about 12 mins and then the upper radiator hose popped off.. I instantly shut the motor off and started investigating I looked around and found the oil had been contaminated with water. right before the hose popped off it started to smoke a little and I instantly jumped to the conclusion the head gasket had failed I thought possibly from over torqueing the arp head bolts ( set to 100 ft lbs)
So I immediately got to work tearing down the top end of the motor down and cleaned as much of the white contaminated oil as I could off of parts and the inside of the motor. I noticed the intake gaskets on both sides seemed to have not sealed on the ends where the coolant passages meet. but I also noticed after pulling the heads that the cylinders all had water in them. so I got all the water out and changed the oil and filter after letting as much out as possible put new head gaskets and reinstalled everything including the intake gaskets which I used a little more rtv this time especially around the coolant passages. I re torqued everything to spec and found out that since I used stainless bolts for the intake they used a different spec than stock. so I re torqued them to the correct spec and let the rtv dry over night.
Skip forward a week or so later after issues with ignition coils and so on I finally got the motor to run again and I went another 20 mins just to be sure I had sufficiently broken the motor in. I then let it cool down and took it out for a spin to go get some fuel. it drove great just was extremely loud since it only has headers with a reducer on the end. after I got fuel I wanted to drive it to the local highschool to see if I could get my old teacher to help me tune it but just down the road from the gas station going about 40 mph it lost power and didn't respond to the throttle and died.
I pulled off to the side and tried to get it to start again but it for some reason started back firing out the exhaust as if the timing had changed. so I loosened the distributor and retarded it just a hair and tried again this time it back fired through the carb. I ended up towing it home and I checked for any bent push rods or any thing out of the ordinary. I couldn't find anything it had good oil pressure when it died and the temp stayed right at 190 the whole time. oil looks great only thing I haven't checked yet is compression which I'm going to rent the tool for today..
so now that you are all caught up with this mess of a project I'm hoping someone here will be able to give me some pointers or have an idea of what could have happened or caused this. Some additional info on the motor it has a summit racing cam part # SUM-1793. I used a edelbrock double roller timing chain and a edelbrock performer intake with a 650 cfm speed demon carb. base timing was set to 11 degrees btc. I also used a tsp electronic distributor and a msd ignition coil.

 

Read over the post on this page about the "pink wire". You need to check the voltage @ the "bat" side of the coil. Good luck

 

I would check compression but 1st I'd check to see if all the valves are opening at the lift that cam is supposed to have. Since you stopped the engine before the 30 minute cam break in period you prolly wiped the lobes when you started it back up. And don't forget the rocker arms add to the lobe lift of the cam. But I just looked. They advertise the lift complete at the valve.


Intake Valve Lift with Factory Rocker Arm Ratio: 0.533 in.
Exhaust Valve Lift with Factory Rocker Arm Ratio: 0.533 in.

 

So a couple buddies and I figured out what I believe was the issue. so after testing the coil and finding it only had 4 v to the coil when the ignition was on. and no spark. happen to look at the instructions and found out that if you use a stock ignition like I am using without a msd box you have to use a .8 ohm ballast resistor. so thinking that messed the coil up. also found that the main wire for the ignition power was burned a bit and corroded so I'm going to replace the wire and the coil plus a resistor.

 

About the stainless bolts: Not sure what grade of bolts you used, but most of them take less torque. You really must use a torque wrench to set them properly, with light oil and clean threads. Having over-torqued them, they will stretch and lose the springiness that allows them to work. A little heat-cycling, and they will go soft. Sorry, they should all be replaced. In few places are stainless bolts 'better'.

In general, new original-specification bolts ought to be used, except perhaps in the case of head bolts, and perhaps a grade up or two might be justified. Elsewhere, if they are in the budget, Grade-8 bolts are nice, as they have better quality control. Likely, they have different torque values, so use the specs suggested by the bolt manufacturer.

Just my opinions..., your research may provide different mileage.

 

Adding another (ballast) resistor is going to cut down voltage even more to the coil. As long as your "pink" resistance wire is still intact there should be 6-8 volts at the coil in "run". As long as your battery has a full charge. Try disconnecting the wire from the coil and measure voltage there at the end of the wire again. The coil being bad is a possibility because some aftermarket coils must be mounted vertical. Yours was prolly horizontal.

 

So I have since gotten the truck to run but I have had nothing but issues with the thing.. First off while messing around with the coil bs i realized that the rotor could spin 360 by hand... so I yanked the thing and of course the little pin that hols the cam gear was sheared which means the rotor wasn't spinning that whole time and neither was the oil drive pump... So I decided to just through in my old distributor with a set of points and it ran perfect snapped right to life first key turn I also had to get new wires and I used my old coil.. so fast forward a few weeks and While driving around my neighborhood I went down a street that was a dead end which gets pretty steep towards the end and of course I got stuck because it would not stay running going up that little hill backwards even with the lightest touch of gas it died and while doing this I realized something was burning so I got out to check and apparently the hot headers made the trans cooling line near by crack and break open which in turn caused one of my headers to catch fire a little.... luckily I keep a fire extinguisher in the thing exactly for that reason... luckily nothing was hurt except the trans line so I had to have it pulled back to my house and ordered some cooler lines that ended up taking 6 weeks to get there.... so when they finally did they installed with no issues and it was all good. except it still had an issue with quick acceleration or steady acceleration on hills so i tried tuning the carb A little and playing with the timing and eventually I decided I wanted to put a new set of points in so I did and set the gap to spec and it wouldn't fire.. so i played with it and played with it for hours nothing... It sat for a few more weeks since by this point I was so fed up with it that i started working on my other project a 69 Falcon that ive swapped a v8 into and ive since gotten that running and driving. Any way today I decided to get a new battery for the truck and get it going again since i stole the trucks battery for the falcon. And I spent all day cursing and kicking the thing. Ive checked and tried just about i can think of Ive tried the old points, the new points, and a pertronix ignitor 2... none of them work ive tried messing with the timing, adjusting the carb checking the plugs which I found one that was a little black and smelled like gas which was cylinder 4 i just cleaned it off and put it back for now. but It would not fire... Toward the end i managed to get it to pop a few times but thats about it... I am so disappointed and fed up with this thing that I don't know what to do with it. The rotor does spin so it didn't shear the gear off this distributor. It has fuel and spark im to the point where im probably going to have to take the valve covers off again and with my own eyballs watch the valves open and close and re stab this distributor cause I cant think of anything else that can be wrong with this thing besides timing. Now that I think of it the first day when I put the new points in It backfired a few times through the carb and had a little fire in there a few times that I put out but since ive messed with it it hasent done it again. Could the carb be the issue?

 

If you were doing these things at the same time, it's possible you reached a point where you couldn't isolate the problem to either a fuel or ignition issue.

 

Yes I tried adjusting the carb and didn't seem to fix it so i tried adjusting timing and That didnt fix it so I thought mabye the points where the issue since they where really old and had some corrosion on them.

 

Rotate to where #1 is on the compression stroke. Timing mark at TDC. Check the rotor to be pointing at #1 terminal. Whatever caused the 1st pin to go might have done it again. You can't always spin the Dizzy by hand when the pin is sheared.

 

I agree with Jefffafa here. Verify your dizzy is good. Once that is done, verify that your wiring is good. One problem is the ignition switch, if you have the style with pins in can cause a multitude of problem.

You did say if backfired through the carb a few times. It may be worth while to go through that now as well. You may have damaged it with the backfires.

If you bypass all the wiring and use a ballast resistor straight off the battery with a switch and check if the truck runs correctly you have proven the ignition is the problem. If it still doesn't run you have a bigger problem.

Sometimes you have to step back and go through each subsystem one by one to find the issue.

 

Change the condenser.

 

Ok Yea I Had issues with the actual switch awhile back the harness for it was falling apart so I put another switch with another harness end I had and just spliced it in and ran a brand new switched power wire to the coil.
Also The carbs a speed demon which should be protected from backfiring but always a chance I guess.
Anyway so today I set the motor to top dead center on #1 cylinder and looked at the distributor It looks like in its current place it was firing way to late like off by 1 cylinder late. so I puled the distributor and re set It and tried to start it. still no luck. the gear was good an I made sure it wasn't sheared like the last one. I also pulled a spark plug out and grounded it to the battery while I had someone else crank and I noticed that there was spark but it was very faint like barley anything It gets spark from the coil which look good and healthy but when it gets to the plugs it looks faint and weak?

 

If you have strong spark at the coil but weak at the plugs it is prolly something in between those two. But 1st 2X Alex. There has been a ton of bad condensers on here. Aftermarket made in china crap. And a bad condenser has shown up on all kinds of different symptoms. Buy a Genuine Ford Motorcraft C9AZ12300A (DC13A) condenser. They are still available and NOT made in china.
If the condenser doesn't solve the problem,a new set of plug wires will make sure they and the coil wire aren't the problem. New cap and rotor also. Look at the inside of the Dizzy cap. Look to see if it's carbon tracking. The carbon tracks will look like crack(s) going from the terminals down to the base of the cap. If it is carbon tracking most or all of the spark is following that track from terminal to ground at the Dizzy housing. Also check the rotor. I have heard of a hot coil burning a hole through the rotor grounding most or all of the spark at the Dizzy's shaft.

 

The distributor is an original but it has new points,condenser,rotor,cap,wires,plugs,and coil, the only thing I haven't changed is the ballast resistor for the coil. How can I test it? also how many volts should a coil see cranking and not cranking?