Technical Priming

I'm 74 years old and have never heard of the "connecting rods hit the cam" on a stock engine. Can anyone verify this?

 

As several others have mentioned, if you have tried a shot of starting fluid or dribbled gas down the carb and not received even a pop then fuel starvation is not likely the problem. You said you had some bad grounds and other wiring issues, you might have weak ignition. Just because you have a spark of some sort under atmospheric conditions does not mean it's strong enough to fire a cylinder. The spark should be blue and jump a 1/2" gap. Very hard to diagnose this stuff without being there but I admire your tenacity and will to learn. I would at this point do as others have said, pop the distributor cap, make sure the rotor is turning, dress and set the points, check cap and rotor condition, check voltage at the coil, maybe run a hot wire from battery direct to coil.

 

Thanks, blowby!
That's the main thing that was bugging me about this. Dammit...I post late at night sometimes and forget what the fk I was thinking in the first place...lol.
Charles...listen to blowby. Do what he said.
If everything is turning and you put a little fuel down the carb and it still didn't fire, the sparkplugs aint a-sparkin'...or at least not good enough.
But still...you said the carb was dry.
Grumble grumble pesky frikin ding dang old cars.
Have fun.

 

I'm another old fart that has never heard of this happening before, of course my memory isn't what it used to be either!

 

YEP

I already verified it when I ***embled my 235, turning the crank without the timing gears installed yet

 

I learned something new today.

 

Cam and connecting rod interference on a 235?
Ummm...I'm not so sure about that. I'm another old fart and I've messed with a few old Chevy 6 engines. 216s and 235s. I don't remember ever having any clearence problems. I thought it was only an issue with the later 292 because of the longer stroke. The 292 cam is actually grooved for rod clearance.