Thread: newb 350 Help

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Hi i just started with my first 350, its mildly built 86, has holley 4bbl double pumper shorty headers dual 3" pipes edelbrock intake nothing much yet. Its inside a 1990 SWB 1500 it was running fine till i started hearing a ticking and found out it was a piece of the header gasket blew out and after i fixed that it started missing when in drive but in park or neutral it smooths out tryed messing with the time and the only way it smooths out is if i put it all the way into advanced passed 12 and if i try and go any lower it starts to miss real bad tryed new plugs new dist. cap and rotor..

you most likely damaged a plug wire either put it on a scope or take a jumper lead clamp one end to ground the other end to an ice pick or awl start the eng and probe through the spark plug boot to short out that cyl when you come to the plug that makes no difference and change the wire and check the plug ...ted

you'll do more damage pulling the plug wires off and on that was fine in the good old days but most newer plug boots are silicone base not rubber like 30 yrs ago you can push an awl through them and you can't even find the hole every time you pull the wire off you run the chance of breaking the wire core that's probably what caused this problem in the first place...ted

tryed new plugs and nogo so im going to try new plug wires and see if it dose any good the thing i dont get is all i did was change the header gasket and it started missing in drive.... ill post results

Don't forget to reset your timing back to where it should be.... Good luck. I see you're from Yukon, we're neighbors.

OK i think it was the plug wires, switched out the accell 8mm with some bosch 8mm and fixed the miss runs smooth now, but what would be the timing for it right now i have it between 6 and 12 **EDIT*** after driving it for a wile the miss came back so it has new plugs and new wires and still missis and jumps only when im in drive all other gears it idles normal could it be a fuel pressure prob. i have a holley blue fuel pump with the holley fuel regulator and running outta 12 gallon fuel cell the fuel pressure gauge reads at 8 psi when in drive..

Have you checked your distributor cap? I spent weeks chasing a miss last year and turned out to be carbon tracking in the cap causing scatter at high revs. Washed out the cap with dish soap and it was good as new... Most would recommend a new cap but it wasn't very old and washing did the trick...

-Chris

i tryed cleaning the dist. cap but still misses and if i try and turn the timing down it misses real bad i guess ill try a new cap and see if it dose any good

Ok i think i might know the whole prob. i was driving home tonite and when i got home it was missing real bad so i hooked up a timing light to make sure the timing was right and i seen that the marker on the balancer wasent showing up.. so i looked around on it with the lite and it was way off almost on the bottom of the balancer.. so dose that mean it jumped time or the timing gears might be warn or maybe the gear on the dist. might be warn out to? if so how hard would that be to fix and what tools would i need?

if you are shure you had your timing light hooked to # 1 most likely your balancer has slipped try timing it by ear or pull # 1 plug bring the piston to tdc and see if the marks line up....ted

well i fixed the timing prob. but it still misses i have tryed everything from new plugs to new dist. cap and still the miss remains and i dont know if its me but it seems like it dosent really have that much power but it might be me.. it all started after i changed the valve cover gaskets and the header gaskets... makes no sence to why it would act up after i changed a few gaskets