Nothing Like The Sun
Today's goal for the truck was to get it running. And I did.

It has been the plan for a few days to verify it would crank before I put the front end back on. Why? Just in case I needed to pull the engine back out.

Why the hoop-la? Because I have been working on it since late October?

At first I just wanted to see the engine turn over. Three wires are all you need. Negative battery terminal to the alternator bracket for grounding. Postive battery terminal to the starter. And one more wire from the switched input on the starter. The third wire when connected to +12V causes the starter to engage. {After the engine starts, don't froget to disconnect the starter wire}

The engine turns over. Good enough. This was basically a repeat of yesterday.

Next I hooked another wire from the battery to the the (BATT) input on the HEI distributor. This is the wire that provides power to the distributor. The distributor cranks up the voltage and directs it to a plug. Cool, now the plugs are sparking.

Next, fuel. To get fuel to the carb, I had to prime the fuel line from the tank to the pump. To make this a little easier, I added a few gallons to the tank. A little gas was pump in the carb to help turn the engine over. After a few spins the pump was supplying the gas.

During all this time, the timing was close but not quite right. I had set the initial timeing using my best guess. Considering this was first attempt things worked out well. My neighbor Lott played with the timing a little bit. We managed to advance the timing too much. That means a ball of fire comes shooting out of the carb. Fortunately he had some experience with this and new to put the lid on the air filter before attempting to start it. This causes the fire to go back out due to a lack of oxygen.

We saw fire 3 times. The first time when we had the time advanced just a little bit. He adjusted it a little be more {in the wrong direction} and we saw more fire. Working in the other direction, we eventually found that we had retarded the timing so much that we found flame again.

It turns out my initial timing was probably pretty close, but it didn't crank, probably because we had it flooded.

When it did finally start, it ran very smoothly. Lott was very impressed. I was ecstatic.

I only let it run for about 30 seconds. Here is why. First we were running off a weak battery. I have not yet hooked the alternator back up. We were not using any of the stock wiring, just the four wires I described above. The old wiring is in really bad shape and needs to be replaced.

Second, I have not installed the radiator yet. Without the radiator, there is also no coolant, or hoses, etc. I had been advised that this would be safe as long as I kept runtime under a minute.

It turns out I need to hookup two more wires to get the alternator hooked in. I found the information I needed here. The great thing about these old Chevys is that when I need some info, there are lots of sites providing technical details. These sites include pages devoted to Chevelles, Cameros, Corvettes, Impalas, Nomads, Bel Aires, and even old trucks. Some of these may not have started out with a small block, but someone is always busy dropping one in.