Spark plug wire question. (Fixed it!)

[Pa PITT]

.........
.... HERE'S One from the past...
OLD FASHION SMOKE TEST.
.... so we had this old man in our town back in the 60's .. YOU Saw him short ..Skinny.. Khaki paints .. Bald headed & smoking a old cigar ...
He did smoke test with his CIGARS.
HE'D CALL Me & say bring me a clean section of vacuum hose so he could do a Smoke test.
.... He'd hook it onto the engine system & He'd smoke & Huff & PuFF..
..............
..... I'LL Have to ask the guys was he blowing the smoke into the system .. I'm remembering back 40+ years ago.
But If you smoke cigars them you don't have to buy a high dollar machine .
............
..... LOOK FOR SMOKE .

 

[Rustytruck]

if you had a sever vacuum leak pull the plugs and see if any are running white.

 

[langester]

All the plugs are black. I pulled the first set and replaced them with a different kind, same thing. I have not pulled all of them the second time but #1 was black when I pulled it.

 

[Seventee]

You will be hard pressed to get 20" Hg at 6500' elevation, but 13.5 seems low for a stock cam and healthy engine. I would expect 15-18.

 

[Pa PITT]

Well black plug means oil burning or totally to much fuel . But fuel shouldn't make them black . more yellow .
... Bad rings .. Stuck rings .. BAD Valve Stems Seals ...
. keep working on it.& give reports .

 

[langester]

I am going to hit it again tomorrow. I will post up anything I find or actually works.
Thank you all for the responses and the help. I appreciate it more than you will ever know!

 

[langester]

I got the Damn thing running finally!
I started the morning off with a compression test, it all looked good. I cleaned and reset the gap on the plugs to 43 and put them in. I took my wires in and checked them against a new set, as I suspected 2 bad wires. I installed the new wires and fired it up, same thing but sounded a bit different. I decided to retry the older 302 firing order and what do you know it fired up and purred like a kitten. Vacuum went up to 15.5 and no more popping.
Someone posted earlier "are you sure its an HO". I took it for granted that the intake on the engine was original. It was marked 5.0 HO, so I blindly followed that and it bit me in the ass!
I did try the older firing order before starting this thread and it wouldn't fire up. I am not sure if the 2 bad wires made a difference or if I did something wrong (again).
Thank you very much for all the help. I wish I could have figured this out earlier and spared everyone's time due to my stupidity. Live and learn as always! Step one: Hello everyone, my name is Steve and I am not the sharpest tool in the shed! Ha!
Have a good weekend!

 

[oldiron]

Don't feel bad. Some of us have done the same thing "me".
Greg

 

[langester]

As the mistakes rack up over a lifetime, the feel bad goes away and the laugh at yourself endlessly starts!

 

[bronco loco]

I am glad you got it running, it is one of the best feelings after so much work.

 

[langester]

Amen Brother!

 

[ared77]

Congrats Steve!