Thread: 460 won't fire

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I have a 1973 460 engie in my Charger jet drive boat. The #7 cylinder was sleeved and engine put back together. I can't get the engine to fire. It actually did fire once and run but quit. Now it won't fire. I need some help and pictures to show me how to set the timing and wire the distributor. The carb is a Carter 9638 and the distributor has points. I tried bringing the #1 cylinder to TDC and at that point I assumed the rotor should point to the marked #1 terminal on the dist. cap but it does not. I am stuck now

Are you sure you're timing it with no1 cyl on the left hand side of the block,[from the front],dont know firing order of hand,are you sure the condenser is clean and earthed to the distributor,i've had problems with this in the past.Will check firing order if you require?poss your timing is 180 degrees out,try turning the motor over one more turn to get the no1 valves shut on the firing stroke.

My first thought was you're 180 degrees out, @TDC on the exhaust stroke. Another way to be sure you're right if the valve covers are not off is to pull your #1 plug, rotate the engine to TDC with a finger in that plug hole and as you have compression bring it to TDC or to your desired timing mark BTDC, whichever is best for what you're doing.

Remove the distributor cap and rotor. Make sure the points are closed. Then have someone turn on the key (to ignition only, not start position) and use a small screwdriver or something similar to manually pry open the points. You should see a spark jump across the points there. That will at least tell you if you have juice going to the points. After that step lets talk again for step number 2.

Don

What kind of distributer setup do you have? If the timing isn't off by 180, possible something wrong with distributer setup. You say it ran once which leads me to think maybe it's a fried wire, like the black one from the distributor to side of the coil(little wire, not plug wire). That is what plagued me with my 71 429 when it wouldn't start. I replaced the wire, and bammo, houston we got ignition!