IT'S ALIVE.... sorta

SUCCESS... well sorta. With the help of my brutha Jim Conley, we got the 460 brought to life on Saturday. After removing the distributor, wires and plugs, we primed the engine oil by spinning the the oil pump and turning the motor over by hand during which time we heard a squeek/squawk noise coming from the back of the engine. As we turned the crank, we were able to determine the sound was coming from the bell housing. I made a quick call to the guy who built the transmission for me and after a brief question and answer session, he too was at a loss for the cause and told me to go ahead and fire it up.

With his assurance, we rolled to engine over to the TDC mark on the cranks and reinstalled the distributor, wires and plugs. After connecting the battery, a fuel source and the remote starter trigger, the 460 rolled over for the first time in several years but wouldn't light off....

With no fire getting to the plugs, we located all the harness grounds inside the cabin and jumpered them together and to ground and I also jumpered the engine to firewall lead directly to the negative post of the battery and we tried again.... SUCCESS. We shut her off, attached the timing light to get her timed and lit her off again......

There was a very noticeable chirp coming from the engine, so we crawled under the car and removed the bellhousing inspection plate and rolled the motor over by hand to see if we could see any signs of the torque converter studs dragging on anything. Nothing visible, so we removed the started and spun her over again... again no signs of what was causing the noise.

With the timing set, we fired her up one last time before calling it a day.....

Hopefully we'll get some good pointers this week on what the source of the noise may be so I can address the issue and keep moving forward.

Until then.....

ZEBRA 3 OUT