So my brother and I rebuilt his 390 basically oil pan up. Put it in his truck, tried to start it and it absolutely will not run. It fires periodically but just for like 3 seconds then dies. It's getting good fuel pressure, timing has been checked a million times, it's not 180 degrees off, #1 is tdc with rotor pointed to #1 on compression stroke, all the wires, plugs, coil and points were new but we figured maybe something is bad so then we even swapped all of dads parts from his running 390 to this motor.. still nothing! Has a NEW 625cfm Holley carb on it that we figured could have been the problem so we swapped it out with dad's running edelbrock off of his 390 to cancel out the possible carb issue.. still nothing! Compression is good on every cylinder, we're 99% sure the timing chain hasn't jumped a tooth cause it's been almost perfectly timed anytime we touch the distributor . Only thing we figured was that the spark might be a little weak cause the two rear cylinders #4 (pass side) and #8 (drivers side) spark plugs aren't burning all the fuel off of them.. so what we decided for now was we purchased a HEI dist. W/built in coil to cancel out all the crap that comes with points. We plan on installing it when it arrives so that's where we are for now Anyone give me some insight?

 

 

Yeah counterclockwise rotation, we've checked it, double checked it. Give me a cap and plugs and I'll set it by heart , we've spun our wheels trying to figure the issue out.

 

 

The main reason we decided HEI 2 wire dist. Was to mainly cancel out all that comes with points to reduce our odds of failure and because we've notice that some of the spark plugs are dry as a bone and others like #4 and #8 at the rear of the motor were wet. Not soaking wet but wet. So we weren't 100% confident that it's getting the spark it should. Maybe enough to get up and try to do something but shoot.. if it's firing good on all cylinders but those two rear ones, it's leading us to believe somewhat that we may not be getting 100% efficiency from our ignition. However, valve timing has been a concern of mine, it's definitely oiled/primed up good all throughout the motor but I don't see how valve timing would be an issue considering the heads were completely gone through, and it's got a new cam. The cam was installed properly, everything checked out good. Lifters were new with the cam, he did keep stock rockers though. I don't know if that would make a difference or not.

 

 

The cam was installed with #1 at tdc at the 0 mark which is all the cam has, it's the one notch for 0. So when we installed it there was only one choice, degreeing the cam was fine, everything checked out. Pushrods and rockers are stock, possible we need different pushrods/rockers?

 

 

 

That was one of the first things I did was run a jumper from the battery to the coil. Then I swapped the coil with dad's from his 390 lol. I'm seriously wondering if the distributor is just faulty in some way.