plz help with troubleshooting -

wondered if anyone could offer some suggestions on my *basic* troubleshooting,
I have a 454 with holley double pumper and a week ago it just wouldnt start- just cranks over, i checked for spark- got that, checked ignition timing- good, checked carb fuel bowls, good - choke closes fine, getting plenty squirt outta the carb, i replaced fuel pump and filter after this too and still nothing. any ideas what to check next ?
thanks- D

Bad gas? Just a guess because that happened to me a while back.

check ur comression, if thats still good then try to find out if the fuel is getting to the cylinders


-GearHead

I just bought a compression guage the other day and am giving that a shot, the first time i did it I got about 5 psi but from what I now understand you have to use the starter to turn it over/ not by hand. One thing I might mention that worries me a bit, is that when I crank it over by hand i noticed a heavy "weezing" sound coming out of the driver side cylinders- not on the other side. Doesnt sound good. - Dave

hmmm, i dont know about that wheezing, it could be a lot of things. does it sound like metal scraping?? if so thats no good. if its a kind of wheezing like air blowing through a small hole then u might have a leaking intake gasket on the drivers side head, which sounds more likely to me, or even on the exhaust gasket. since u were cranking it by hand, all u hear through the exhaust gasket is the air flowing through a hole in it. if u run the car and its really loud, or when u let the rpms go down from a high rpm immediatly and u hear a loud clicking sound, then the exhaust gasket is gone. if these are bad its still not part of the problem but should be fixed. anyways.... to use the compression tester first off make sure u disengage the ignition system so it doesnt start on u, lol. just unplug the coil from the distributor, it should be the wire in the center of the distributor cap. then screw the tester in a cylinder and crank the engine and watch for the tester to pump up 3 times, thats 3 whole compression strokes. the compressions should read about 135 or higher, dont worry about how high u go the higher the better, i think on a 454 its normally high, like 160 or so, but im not sure about that 1. if its under 130 but above 100 then u have a small leak that should be fixed but that shouldnt be the starting problem, if its below 100 then thats ur problem, ESPECIALLY if its 5!! hahaha u need to do this to every cylinder. a V-8 will run on 4 cylinders so if u even have only 4 cylinder with good compression its not the problem with starting, but its does need to be fixed asap. if ur compression is good all around then reply to me EVERYTHING u have done and know about it and i will give it my best shot at helping u. sorry this was so long.

-GearHead

gearhead, thanks for the response , feel free to write as long as you like -
anyway, i tested compression on the cylinders and all turned out 130-140. One guy I know was telling me that the weezing can be from letting the car sit too long, after i did the testing, I cranked it over by hand, the weezing sound was not nearly as loud, and i dont think it was just on the driver side, just more in the middle.
-Im not so sure that im getting gas to the cylinders now either, after i crank it and pull out the plugs, shouldnt they be covered in gas? after i crank it and pull em out, they're bone dry.
-other things that i did early on were fuel pump and filter replacement
-changed out ignition, i made sure i wasnt 180 out on the distributor, by cranking to tdc on compression and checking rotor position , firing order etc., already checked spark at the plug while cranking also. -
- i have a hunch that there's something going on with that carb- thnx for the help- Dave

You know u might have just put the filter in backwards, doing this caa actually pulg the hole to the bowls instead of filtering it. Check you float lv, maybe its too low to do much. also yes the fact that the plugs were bone dry is bad, they should have shined with gas. this very well could be your problem. I hate to ask it, but r u sure u have gas? alot of people spend days like this and figure out its empty =P sorry but u might want to find out your gas gauge could be off if it says full. by the way im glad to hear about the wheezing, i have never had that happen to me before either, i would have been freakin out too.

-GearHead

the filter had direction of flow stamped on the retaining plates, if its backwards, its cuz they stamped it wrong. I've checked the bowl levels a bunch of times and i filled up the tank before my last drive of about 20 miles. shouldnt the fact that there's fuel in the bowls be enough to get the engine to do something?

How old is the gas?
Also, your coil might be bad. I had an old Ford, (429 ) with the same problem. Everything checked out, even the spark, but it still did not run. It turned out the coil was weak, strong enough to show a spark in the open air, but not enough in the pressue of the engine (compression and all)
I swapped a coil out of a wrecked VW Rabbit I had and it ran great.
BTW it still has the VW coil, after 14 years.

the gas is about 3 weeks old, the coils new
either way, i think im getting a bit closer, i bought a direct connect fuel guage and put it in, getting a little over 6 1/2 . So i thought with all this stuff good, if i put gas in the cylinder - it *has* to do something. So i turned it over and hit full throttle( longer than i would normally try this for) and it fired right up, then started dying as i let off the gas. I checked the idle speed screw and noticed it was kind of out, so i started screwing it in to see if i could keep an idle but even with it *all* the way in it wouldnt keep the idle , so i figured its probably something else. I was able to keep it running as long as i held the throttle about 1/2/+ of the way down. I suppose knowing a little more about carbs would be useful here. btw i have a holley 650 double -pumper - thnx everybody- Dave

Check for vacum leaks.. could have been where wheezing was coming from?

it also could be the accelerator pump, the setting on it could be giving no gas at idle and too little at WOT. check the setting on it if it is even to stock standards. the pump could be bad itself too.

-GearHead

i did rebuild the carb, but didnt really check out the acc. pump - that will be the next things I look at, im replacing the intake man. gasket right now also, im starting to guess a vacuum leak after talking to a few people.

I"ll go along with the vacuum leak, especially at the intake manifold gasket. I had one once and it drove me crazy for two days. The gasket wasn't the culprit-the intake manifold was slightly warped.
Good luck!!

An old trick I used to use to check for leaky intakes, was to take a spray bottle of WD-40, and spray around the mating surface of the intake to head, and intake to carb. If it's leaking then it will suck the spray in while it's running. I would think if you had a bad intake gasket you would see a coolant leak. If you had a vacuum leak, it would still start, just run really rough. WOT would make it worse, not better. I'm thinking this is a carb problem.

Was this motor running and then one day just not start or are you trying to fire it for the first time? The proper way to do a compresion test is to remove all the plugs, disable the spark, hold the carb wide open as you crank the starter. You said you had a Holley carb, you didnt say what manifold you were running. are you sure the manifold and heads are the same( oval or square port )is the intake for a Holley or Q-Jet or both, do you have the right gasket under the carb, and are all the vac. sources pluged. The wheezing you heard is the compression of the cylinders leaking past the rings as you turn it over by hand, its normal, if it didnt you wouldnt be able to turn it over by hand.

Wade

hey man ,does your carb have a power valve in it?this can cause the same probs youre having,the power really goes down & itll run like crap .just a thought ,good luck

yeah, i fixed this a while back, never found out what it was, i just took off the manifold - reinstalled , timed ign, and tuned the carb and it was fine, what was weird was everything was setup the same before i tore it apart as after. - some things we'll never know I guess

Bad gas is a good place to start, with 140 psi of compression you have a 10.52:1 compression ratio, thats some heavy duty compression for pumpgas. try taking your fuel line off your tank and put it into a fresh can of gas and then crank it over. That is an easy way to check for it. Next, even if your timing is correct if you have an old style ignition, non high energy, you have a dwell screw. Try turning out the dwell on your distributor.