Why Won’t My Jeep Start??

Hi everyone, I have a 1968ish 225 v6. I have given the engine everything it needs. New hei distributor, fuel, air, and it has compression. When I crank the engine I get a couple of pitiful puffs, but it won’t catch and fire. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

If you have spark i'ld look at timing first.

 

Welcome to ECJ5. What part of Alabama?

if it backfires it may be The distributor is 180 out. Meaning the distributor is firing on the exhaust stroke. Remove distributor rotate engine once reinstall distributor.

 

We have done that, but it ended up already being on the compression stroke. I am from mobile.

 

Hi Tyler, That's not far. Get that jeep going and we'll do some wheeling.

 

Welcome from Oklahoma. Can you share a picture of how you have the distributor oriented? When you put the #1 at TDC did you take the drivers side valve cover off to verify it was on the compression stroke?

 

I have since flipped the distributor 180 to see if I was mistaken as to what stroke the engine was on, and I had no luck at all.

 

I know the engine bay is a mess. That’s not my doing I promise.

 

It is hard to tell from your picture but it looks like your plug wires are arranged on the distributor cap the same as mine. The distributor body is clocked differently as a whole, but that shouldn't matter as long as the rotor is clocked correctly relative to the cap. The fact that this happened after you put in the HEI makes the it suspect. Did it run okay with the original distributor? Also are you sure the power wire is on the correct terminal on the cap?

Here is mine, if you zoom in you can see some old sharpie marks on the cap showing the cylinder numbers. I run mine about 12 degrees BTDC, ie before top dead center.