thatguy32567

For some reason my engine keeps dieing and i dont know why. It ran great until i got it timed then about a week after it started randomly dying. I can get the car to start and run for about 10 minutes until it warms up then it sputters and dies. Anyone have any idea how to fix it?
Its a 350 rocket with a new edelbrock 650 cfm Carb.

Erinyes

Not much info to go from (more is better, too much is not always enough), but make sure the choke is opening. If it is, try partially blocking the snout of the carb to artificially richen the carb, see what happens. It could be a massive vacuum leak, or other extreme lean condition, and when the choke comes off the mixture is no longer rich enough to keep it running.

What else can you tell us? What do the plugs look like? Did whoever timed it know what they were doing? Can you recheck the timing, make sure the vacuum lines are all connected properly, the distributor clamp is tight, etc.?

nickd

If the distributor was pulled it could be cracked?

bccan

Wire (primary) to coil fatigued or broken? That or vacuum line/nipple/can would be my first suspects - especially if it runs through coolant temp activated valve on manifold. 10 mins would probably be about right to hit temp & open vac ports. Wonky secondary coil wire that got upset by being grabbed to turn dist? Vac advance arm hitting primary wire inside dist? All just WAGs but things I would check.

Erinyes

Well, the most likely thing is it could have been put back in one tooth off.

Although you could get the timing "set", it would not be correct. I'd definitely recheck that.

If you're not familiar with this procedure, you might want someone to give you a hand. It's not really complex, but it's easier to work through if you've got some familiarity with cap/rotor orientation.

svnt442

This is something that make me just a bit nuts. The distributor is a mechanical device and as such has no clue how it is oriented in the engine. You can drop in a distributor ANYWHERE and as long as you can orient the posts on the cap in the correct position and get the marks on the balancer to line up, then the engine will be in time.
That's the key. Get the timing marks to line up when running, and the engine is in time. There no way around that.
Now if the cam and crank are one tooth off then you need to pull everything apart and fix it. But with the distributor it doesn't matter where it is so long as the wires are in the correct order and relative to the rotor in the correct positions.

As far as your dieing issue start with the choke plate. Make sure it's opening. If you don't have an automatic choke then my guess is this would be you're issue.

Erinyes

This is all true.

But, I've seen cases where someone dropped in the distributor such that the original, stock orientation was off, and as a consequence the vacuum advance unit ran bang up against a vacuum port in the manifold, preventing the distributor from actually being able to be adjusted to proper timing, even after rewiring the cap -- and the person responsible didn't understand why, so ended up with poor timing adjustment.

A good mechanic can make it work. Someone who is just starting out, or doesn't actually understand the principles, might not.

I used to run my 71 GMC (with HEI) like this for years, till I got a set of plugwires that just didn't want to stretch around the headers until I reoriented the distributor. That's also when I discovered that I couldn't get bulk wire, terminals, and boots easily anymore, to make my own wires. Of course, some of that might just be due to living in a remote area, and the local parts store just didn't want to order a box of 50 so I could buy 2...

svnt442

Correct. But again the point is if the timing indicated on the pointer is correct, then it doesn't matter where the distributor is.
I agree that it is best to have it in the correct placement for running the pre made wires though.