Hello everyone,

Before I start heres a little background on what I know about this vehicle, I recently received a 1962 Plymouth Valiant v200 with a 225 and a904 in it. The car has been sitting for 3 years due to the previous owner passing while in the process of upgrading it. He was in the process of doing upgrades when he passed, so the vehicle was out of commission and whoever it was passed down to was not mechanically inclined. The car came with a complete engine gasket set, various parts, a uninstalled motorcraft 2150 and 2 barrel manifold.

So far I have replaced the fuel pump, dist cap, rotor button, ballast resistor, spark plugs, wires, gas, oil, and coolant. Under the distributor cap, the PO installed a Pertronix Ignitor. Since the original carb was missing I have installed the Motorcraft 2150 and 2 bbl manifold.

When attempting to start the car, it only cranks continuously and does not try to fire at all, even with starter fluid. My carb gets fuel, my spark plugs get spark, and my distributor timing is correct, I turned the engine by hand until the 1# piston was at TDC and set it from there.

Along with all of the parts that came with the car was an empty camshaft box with gaskets in it. I am wondering if maybe the engine timing is off? Is there anything else I could check for before removing the radiator and timing chain cover?

Welcome here.
Are you sure you put the № 1 piston at the correct TDC? That is the one between the compression and power strokes (both valves closed) and not the one between the exhaust and intake strokes.

Once you've verified that, see here.

_________________
一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I'm certain that I am setting my timing at TDC, I verified with the pulley notch and also by feeling for compression with finger in spark plug tube. The notch on the pulley seems to line up perfectly with 0 deg TDC. I looked at your advice for rotating the distributor tooth by tooth and found that when the rotor is spun 180 degrees away from tower 1 at TDC I finally get a little bit of action but still not what I am wanting.

I'm pretty sure I've spun the distributor around tooth by tooth3 times by now though with no results other than backfire from the carburator, though that is more than before I made my first post.

I've posted a video hoping it can help you help me, sorry for the camera orientation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhIlzh-iRw4

I don't know a whole lot about carburetors or engine internals so I bought this car to learn. The carburetor that is on the car was installed by me since the original Carter BBD and linkage was missing and the 2 barrel manifold was already installed. I had never installed a carb before so there is potential that I did it wrong of course.


I purchased an adapter from GRONK performance on ebay for the motorcraft 2150 because the trans-adapt 2bbl adapter does not cover the entire base.

As I mentioned before it is a Motorcraft 2150, I have the distributor vacuum hose plugged into the bottom side vacuum port on the carb, and a vacuum hose coming from the firewall which I assume is for heat plugged into the rear of the carb, the rest of the ports are plugged, and I am using a Lokar linkage kit for the throttle. I have not hooked up the kickdown lever for the transmission yet and am waiting till I can actually get the car to start.

Just listened to your video. By what I hear, that engine doesn't have enough compression to start, and the battery doesn't have enough juice in it to run the starter and the ignition at the same time. Assuming ignition timing and spark plug wire sequence are correct, the spitback at the end suggests stuck valves, very likely (along with stuck rings) with the long sitting time you described.

Odds are you've got engine work ahead of you.

_________________
一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.