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?????

[nditiz1]

If the car pops stutters backfires at IDLE here are the things to check:

Idle circuit is dirty - are the carbs clean? Have they been cleaned?
Mixture screws are set too lean - richen them up to see if the popping goes away.
Get the Syncrometer on the throats and see if all 4 are in sync. You don't need linkage at this step.

Timing could be off, but I believe you ran it up to 3500 and set the timing to 27/ the mark on the pulley. If you did, then the timing is correct, no need to touch the timing anymore.

Getting a smooth idle of around 1000-1100 is the key right now. You can worry about smoothness up to 3500 in a later step.

EDIT - Adjust idle speed with the carb idle speed adjusters which will in turn adjust the vac pull so double check they are back in sync. When you want to make the car smooth throughout the RPM band you will need to use the syncrometer to check the vac pull at a few different intervals up to ~3000 rpm. Hold the rpm steady at 1500, check both sides, 2000 check both sides, 2500 check both sides. Each interval should have the same pull which means the linkage is in sync.

EDIT2 - some engines like to idle at a higher RPM then 950. 1200 is a little on the high side I would shoot for between 1000-1100. The best budget linkage is the CSP center pull. You can see it on Zach's latest 2.3 PMB engine.