wont fire up and run

if you have someone to help you, have them try to start it while you slowly turn the distributor. that just might get it running enough to put a timing light on it.
are you sure you are getting plenty of fuel? how old is the gas? if it has been sitting for a while you might want to throw a bottle or two of HEET in the tank.very possible that it could have some water in the tank from condensation. just a thought.....
hope this helps & best of luck on your stang!

ppartain said:

i have installed a bennet racing 306 and painted everything under the hood. i followed the "crank but wont fire procedure posted on here". i have spark at the #1 plug, i had the distributer 180* out and i set it back at about 11 oclock on the rotor button. it is now trying to fire but wont crank and run. i went one notch foward which was @ 12 oclock and it really didnt want to fire at all. i went back to 11 oclock and its trying at least.

Click to expand...

The info you've provided is on the distributor procedures are very vague, so let me start from the beginning. You may already know this info, but maybe not.

Here's what I do when I put in a distributor and it works everytime. First I turn the engine by hand until I am on the compression stroke of the #1 piston. I then keep rotating the engine until the timing marks on the crank damper line up with whatever timing degree I want to set it at (for example: 12 degrees). Then prior to putting in the distributor, I mark on the body of the distributor (with a sharpie felt pen) where the #1 wire terminal is on the cap. Then I drop the distributor in an line the rotor up with the mark I made. By doing this, you're setting the distributor timing exactly where it should be firing (in theory). The car should fire up and run because your timing is basically already set and it may only need slight adjustment. But it's close enough that it will start and run pretty good. After it's running, throw a timing light on it and fine tune your timing. I'm sure other guys do it a little different, but this method has always worked for me (I think most guys set the piston at TDC, where I set it at what the timing should be, which is alot closer to what the end result would be, as far as timing is concerned). Hope this helps....