Bullitt Mustang

[don4331]

OK, been a while (40+ years) since I regularly worked on vehicles this old...

There were some issue from the car sitting 20+ years with floats being gummed up from when gas in carb evaporated, but we rebuilt the carb (Holley double pumper) and it ran fine after.

So, we turned our attention to fixing some of the historic (70s/80s) rust/accident damage. The frame rails ahead of the shock tower are now cleaned up; front suspension rebuilt.​

When we went to start, it we started having issues:

The starter failed.... We replaced with new and now the 390 turns over just fine.​

We didn't have fuel, so we replaced the fuel pump. The issue was probably vapour lock, but we didn't test for that initially - we knew we had fuel to the pump, nothing out of the pump; we had spare pump, so we replaced.​

Now, we don't seem to have spark. We replaced the distributor (we're restoring to OEM parts). The points are set correctly per the Ford manual. We have 12 volts to the coil (we're bypassing the ballast until we get it running).​

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Any ideas on what to look for? @19Walt93 We'll work on timing after we have some spark...​

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Have you tested the coil?

 

[don4331]

It's brand new, but no; that was next on the list.

 

[19Walt93]

Many times a new condenser would fail and yesterday's tune up customer would be towed back to the shop, that would be my first suspect. If you feed the coil 12 volts it will overheat and eventually fail but probably not before the points burn. I would ditch the points and put a drop in Pertronix unit in your distributor, other than one extra wire it will still look original and be a lot less trouble. Pertronix complete distributors are Chinese made garbage, their drop in units are from Texas and have proven themselves.
If the gas tank hasn't been replaced or at very least cleaned, I wouldn't put fuel in it and pump it into my carb. I worked on a 68 Mustang last summer that hadn't run in 8 years. I strapped a beer can to the inner fender as a temporary fuel tank so I could back it out of my garage to wash the engine. The crusty old gas tank went onto the scrap metal pile.

 

[don4331]

Bad ignition switch wiring:

At some point in the car's checkered past, the ballast wires were cut and replaced with regular wires, then under the hood a ballast added next to the Accel coil. We replaced with stock wiring/coil under the hood, but never checked the switch wiring (we never touch anything inside the car).​

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Now we have issues with carb being gummed up after sitting for a year but in the words of Victor Frankenstein, "It's alive!"