[Lee]

To clarify, I had this engine on my test stand a little over a month ago. The owner of the engine lives near another friend of mine, and that friend put us in touch. The owner built the motor himself. We ran it on the test stand to break in the cam and check for leaks and such.

I've got plenty of voltage and larger than needed wiring. I've got a dial-back timing light that I've used on other motors. After break-in, we set the total timing to ~36 with the engine @3000-3200rpm. Upon idling it down, the timing was higher than expected. "Hmmm, maybe the distributor moved" I thought, and brought it down around 14. When I revved the motor with the timing light on, the timing RETARDED!

I checked the weights, and they seemed correct and moved freely. I tried a different rotor, thinking that maybe it was binding - not the issue. My conclusion was that SOMETHING was screwy with the distributor, which was a new Summit house brand. I set his float levels, and the car was running decently. I tagged Skip in a video I took, of the motor running on my stand - smooth and proper throttle response.

Owner took the motor home, and ordered the DUI. Once he had it in the car, he first had issues with the carb - turned out he had a kinked return line and carb was over-pressuring. He got THAT fixed, and now he is at the problems described by Skip.
i