I own a 1979 bronco with a 460 in it. It has an oversized cam, new edlebrock 750 cfm carb, mallory coil, comp distributer, new batteries, alternator, and starter. The other day i started it up as usual by giving it a little gas to get it to idle because it is a manual carb, well it shut off after a few seconds when i was reving it and hasnt started since. It will crank all day and the batteries are still not having to be jumped but it wont turn over. It seems to backfire in a way to and even shot a flame out the tailpipe but i cant even get anything but a crank from it. It doesnt even sound like it wants to go. Its not the fuel lines or the carb so im thinking the coil or distributer which has the ignition module inside it, it has three wires going into it, a red, green and orangish brown, which i beleive runs the ingnition module. When i hooked up a spark plug tester we got a very low spark that wasnt steady. It seemed as if it was barley sparking at all. could this be the coil and distributer or can it also be something else. How hard would it be to change out the distributer or install one with a vacume advance, being mine is very basic. Sorry for the length but any help would be greatly appreciated figuring its my only driver.
Thanks
Joseph

 

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 12-Jun-02 AT 04:11 AM (EST)] Have you established that it has not jumped time? It seems if it has enough spark to create a backfire it should fire the cylinders.