I made a bunch of trips with the 1 gallon gas can to the gas station, 5-6 gallons in put the fuel gauge at about a 1/4 tank. Turned the key to ON and the fuel pump fired up and I had just over 7lbs of pressure at the carburetor. Fuel in the carburetor fuel bowls was just slightly over half full.
Next step was priming the oil pump. I had converted the old distributor to an oil pump primer. I ran the drill on the modified distributor in reverse and had 50lbs oil pressure on the gauge. With good oil pressure, we ran the oil pump while we made 2 full revolutions on the crankshaft trying to make sure that oil was forced everywhere.
With the engine primed we installed the real distributor. Aligned the 10 degrees BTDC timing mark on the harmonic balancer with the pointer. Then slid the distributor in and aligned the number 1 spark plug terminal with the rotor tip (we'd find out later that this really put timing just about right at TDC).
With distributor in and positioned correctly, a quick once over of everything to see if something was missed and then we pushed it into the driveway. I had wet towels, fire extinguisher, and an assortment of tools at the ready.
Turned the key to ON then to START. Engine cranks over for a few seconds sputters and quits (I was giving it a bit of gas thinking that it wouldn't just idle, I should have just left my foot off the pedal). Crank #2 for a few seconds and nearly started (i'm still trying to hard withe gas pedal). 3rd crank and it fires right up. I give it gas and get it up to between 2000 and 2500 rpm for the cam breakin.
The car is so loud at that RPM you can barely hear yourself think let alone try to communicate with anyone else. After 7 or so minutes coolant starts coming out of the overflow causing me to shut it down. Checked the cooling system and figured there must have just been some air in the system. Found out the timing was only around 7 degrees BTDC. I wanted it closer to 20-25 degrees at that RPM (later I learned up around 30 is probably even better). Adjust the distributor a bit to advance timing and fire it up again. Watching temp gauge and oil pressure gauge. Once the temp got up to 210 degrees I shut it off not feeling comfortable about how hot it was. Let it cool for a bit thinking about how to keep it cool. The neighbor brought over a fan. Fire it up with the fan blowing, and it still got a little hotter than I was comfortable with.
Finally the bright idea came to me to just run a garden hose over the radiator to help keep the temp down. That got it for the remained of the cam breakin! It's Alive!
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