What went wrong?, it was running great and then not at all Options

[Type 47]

so we put the original 62k engine back in that had not had the distributor removed. Adjusted the valves (again after we put about 10 miles on it) we rebuilt the Webbers and it fired up. We did some timing and tweaking on the carbs.

It ran OK but a little shy of perfect. I replaced the wires and it seemed to improve it but idled a little high around 1,200.

My son came over to work on it the next day, but I wasn't home. All of a sudden, it won't even run.

we swapped distributers (both 009's) with the parts car, then swapped points (adjusted to 0.016). no improvement.

tested spark to all four cylinders. I seems like it's really out of timing but we didn't change it much. (except for the fact that we took the distributor out)

my son says we have spark, too much fuel, and not enough air.

What do we do next?????

[Superhawk996]

Sorry - not trying to over simplify

However tuning is an iterative process. Airflow affects idle mix, mix affects idle speed, idle speed affects timing (due to centrifugal, mechanical advance on 009), and synch between the two carbs goes right back to affecting airflow.

All the above are interrelated to Venturi and jetting.

It’s anything but simple. But it needs to be worked through in a methodical way with each incremental adjustment becoming smaller.

Since you never got to a stable idle below 1200 rpm per your original post I can only conclude that something was not adjusted properly.

Your most recent post of having popping and backfiring could at a bare minimum be tied to it getting lean as you transition off idle.