My caddy has no power--any advice?

Hey guys--looking for some tuning suggestions because I'm stumped. Got a '54 with the 331 and single Carter 4-barrel. Engine was stuck when I pulled it out of a barn last year, have spent the past year trying to get the car on the road and took the maiden drive today. It's running and the transmission is shifting firm, but it has VERY LITTLE power--barely enough to accelerate. I know just enough about engines to be dangerous, but I have rebuilt the carb and fine tuned it to all the specs in the manual, new distributor with new vacuum advance (adjusted for proper timing advance), dwell set per specs, and just put new intake gaskets on it to eliminate the possibility of a vacuum leak. New plugs (gapped properly), wires, coil, etc. Tuned the carb again today (screws are ~1-1/2 turns out--just to the point where vacuum starts to drop off), and when you give it the gas you can hear it drawing in lots of air but nothing really happens--gotta keep it in low gear to get any acceleration.

I'll admit that the downdraft tube does puff smoke (not too bad, though), so do you think this could be a sign of little-to-no compression? As in, I scored the crap out of the cylinders when I broke the engine free and started running it? I'm going to go back and check the dwell tomorrow and start advancing the timing to just shy of pinging, but I was curious about any obvious suggestions you guys may have.

 

Johnny, Check the exhaust! It might be a home for critters, they like to nest in there when the car is being stored in a barn or garage. Just loosen it at the manifolds(if not too rusty) and try the acceleration then. If the pipes wont come off there you may have to resort to a hack saw somewhere near the engine to make your test. Good Luck, Normal Norman

 

Hi Jonny1,
I think if you scored the cyl's badly,it would be oroducung alot of blue/white smoke out the exhaust.
One thing you might check is has the exhaust system become
restricted while setting up?Like rats nests etc. in the mufflers.
Disconnect the exhaust before it enters the muffler(s).If it runs
great,you have exhaust blocked somewhere.
If that's no help,do a compression test on each cyl. through the
spark plug holes.Also I think you should add on,at least temporarily,
a good oil pressure gage to make sure you have at least minimum
pressure.
It could also be that you have some stuck hydraulic valve lifters
from long sitting and some valves are only partially opening.
Stick with it...that's all fixable and it's a fine engine!

 

rings are probley stuck too ,meaning not much compression

 

I would start with a compression test it is an easy thing to do. Disconnect cable from the coil to the distributor and test each cylinder. Then if thats good I would check the exaust