Technical SBC guys, help me get my 283 runnung right before i put a match in the gas tank

I may have missed reading about this, but did you check the vacuum advance unit. Had one not long ago worked fine and then didn't. Check the usual suspects, then hooked a vac source to the advance unit and saw no movement under the cap. The new advance unit required some mods, and presto! Running as it should

 

First, thanks to everyone that responded and offered thier insight.It was much appreciated. A few guys m entioned that when i finally figured it out it would be something simple and it was. I had rewired the light circuits but didn't hook them up to the buckets because i wanted to do some restoration work on them. As a result, i had the front headlight harness hanging over the radiator into that deadspace between the rad and the grill.The male buttet connector for the low beam was dangling a hair from the chin pan.When the car was moving the wire was arching on the metal chin pan and the headlight switch was on so my guess it it would short the battery everytime it touched the metal. I hadn't given the headlights a thought because i kinew they weren't connected . The way i found it was to completly disconnect the wiring harness and run a hot directly to the coil and another to the fuel pump,direct from the battery. It ran perfect, so i knew it was something in the harness. when i started doing some tests with a test light and found the wire to be hot ( again, because the switch was on) i taped the wire , hooked everything up and all was well. At some point during excercise in frustration i did hook a hotwire direct from the battery to the coil just to make sure i had uninterupted voltage to the coil but i didn't disconnect the coil wire that came from the harness so the short was still having effect. Also, i did on severel occasions run the car in the dark garage but didn't see the wire arching on the chinpan because i was looking at all the engine connections and the short was happening way down in front of the radiator.
when i was in high school in the late 60's my friends and i all ran cars with these early smallblocks. WE would randomly switch or replace motors , do half asssed backyard rebuilds and performance mods and we never needed high tek testing equiptment or O2 sensors or fuel air gauges etc. All these parts were made to work together so i was reluctant to venture into that territory and i'm glad i didn't have to. Also, the rochester works just fine when mounted backwards ( i actually don't think it knows it's on backwards and i'm not goint to tell it ) Anyway, thanks again for the well intentioned input, now i can continue with the project !

 

Good that your up & going ,,,
But one thing that you mention that is not the same before 2005ish is the gas,
You & other if you ever use one will find out that the little hi tech O2 / AFR gauge will make you a better tunner ,,,
& Timing spec are different requirements on the modern fuel.

 

The things we do to ourselves!!

Glad you found it.

Ben

 

Thank you for the follow up!

 

90% of carburetor problems are electrical in nature.
I’m going to guess you left the little clue about dangling hot wires hanging out of the harness to keep us on our toes? Lol

 

Thanks for updating.

 

Thanks for the update.

 

Shoot i hoped that you would get really agivated and want to sell it to me.

 

Glad to hear you solved your problem!

 

What a bonehead!......J/K
I can say that because.......I have done worse (several times!)
Glad ya figgered it out and reported back.
6sally6

 

Thank you for letting us know.