Soooo. I get that menagerie of wires lengthened, get them as tidy as possible and Put the dash back on. Partially, no glove box, no speakers, no instrument cluster yet.
I purge my fuel system, and hook it to the carb. I prime the system and check for leaks.
None,....great, so far so good.
I top off the water in the radiator, and close the system.
I hook up my laptop and upload the timing curve back in so I can see what I have,....all looks good. I attempt to start it.
Waah na nah, waah na nah, waah na nah, waa na nah,..no cranky.
I now have got only a speaker hole on the passenger side and the open glove box hole to try and determine WTF is wrong w/ the wires that I extended.
I find the 12v "switched" wire and check it. Dead. I find a new circuit, ck that it is switched, splice it in place of the old, and try to crank it. Still no fire. I ck the wire again, and it's only got 12v in key on, and dies when in crank. I find a new switched circuit that has 12v in both modes, and splice that in.
( imagine what is happening to the "tidy" wiring that I had under the dash)
We're back to where I was an hour before, so now I attempt to start it again. It fires! It is now popping on the passenger side out of the tail pipe every second or so, I shut it off. Total run time:...maybe 5 secs.
I dick w/ the timing curve, download it into the box, start it. Still popping. I shut it off. (Add 5 more secs to the total run time.)
It's 8:00 PM, the garage has made the entire house smell like gas fumes and exhaust, so I decide to tackle the misfire tomorrow and open my door. I was met w/ a surging tide of synthetic oil now pouring out from under the car, I have to jump out of the car to clear the lake of Mobil 1 that is now under my car, and scramble to find any rag, paper, or towel to stem the surge before it makes it to the crap lining the walls.
I manage to get my Exxon Valdeez incident sopped up w/o endangering any of the indigenous wild life in my garage. There is still however remnants of the oil spill disaster every where, little puddles and streams from the front of my car to the trash can out side. I roll the car outside and thoroughly clean the floor w/ a mop and some dawn. I roll it back in, jack it up and slide under to try and determine where the leak came from. Oil drain plug? Nope tight and dry. Filter? The same. Sender? Ditto. To my horror, I find that up under the header there is evidence of the gusher in the form of a missing galley plug. This plug is accessed from the deck surface of the head.
Stupid Piece of S hit 4.6 has oil galley plugs in the deck surface of the head.! Now I'm raging pissed. This means that I'm gonna have to pull the head off of the car to get to that plug. It being a SOHC means that I'll also have to remove the T/C cover as well. I'm supposed to be in the auto show in one week. I'm so mad, that I start jumping around the garage uttering some guttural, unintelligible rage speak, and find a piece of CPVC and beat it on the floor until it is shattered into a million pieces. I resign myself to have to spend the next several days taking the heads off, (because I don't know if they left the plugs out of the other head either) buying another set of those stupid TTY head bolts, contaminating the floor w/ antifreeze again, Bolting the heads back on and re-timing the engine again, all because of an ommitted 1/8" pipe plug!!!
I get up this morning half committed to draining the antifreeze, when I decide to see if that plug can be seen, or better yet accessed after the header is removed. I get it out in about 30 minutes, and low and behold,....there that damn thing is! I think I might be able to get to it after all.
I have to cut one of my 3/16 allen wrenches to make a "custom tool" but it does the trick.. I manage to get that damn pipe plug in a space that was only about 3/4" between the head deck surface, and the block. Fortunately, it over hung the deck surface of the block just enough to allow access.
I get it in and tight, but then start wondering,.... "There are two of those damn plugs in each head, If they left out one, what if they left out the other one too?" ( Now conveniently obscured by the intake manifold, and the T/C cover) I decide to risk it, and fill the engine up w/ the 4.5 qts of oil it puked out during the 15 seconds of cranking, and the additional 10 seconds of running it did last night.
I check everything again prior to the restart,....all good....... I fire that mother up.
Still back firing, but No more GD leaking!. The oil pressure reads 75 lbs, it's charging at 14 volts, but it wont stay running to save it's ass! I put a Vacuum gauge to see if there is some wierd s hit happening w/ the lifters not pumping up, which would mean that the other plug was missing, and now all of the oil is pouring back into the engine in the timing chain cover.
But I got 20" of vacuum, dead steady needle. Those lifters are pumped up, and opening and closing the valves like they're supposed to. This problem I have has got to be electrical.
It was. I had # 3 and #4 coil pack wires transposed. when I swapped them around, the motor ran perfectly. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the cams are "stage 1", there is no noticeable lope to the cams whatsoever. They sound, and Idle dead stock. Matter of fact, I could idle the engine at 600 RPM if I choose, they are so tame. Stage 1 must be modular speak for gay.
I don't care.
I'm never taking that motor apart again. Ever.
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