thosearezs

while cranking the engine and adding starter fluid i adjusted the timing and it made no difference in either direction. ALso when i found TDC the notches in the harmonic balancer were way off. i was assuming that the cam lobe had to be straight up for it to be TDC. is it possible that the harmonic balancer has just slipped a lot or what?

cleaned out the bowls. they had some gunk in there definitely some other information: when i try starting it it'll make this sound like its firing every 1 or 2 seconds but never actually starts running

took my floats out and they're NOT parallel like yours @siteunseen. checked the hoses and they're fine too. but i'll keep checking other areas of the carbs not to deviate from the carbs but could it be a wrong firing order? I had to find the position of the first sparkplug by putting my finger over the whole and checking for pressure to stop. I know this is a janky fix but i had friend watch the cam lobe through the oil fill cap

and for most of the duration it sat the carbs were off. I'm not denying the gas went to $^!# but it didn't sit in the carbs at least

forgot to mention i've added about 4 gallons of new gas + additive. im not sure at what rate the new fuel gets mixed in but i've cranked it a a lot since putting new gas in so that may or may not be the case. and it sat for a few months. if i had to put a number on it i'd say 3-4 months

@siteunseen what nozzles need to move freely? and is it necessary to set the valve clearance after changing the valve cover. I figure even if it was off from before it should still start

For some background I have a '71 Datsun 240z and have made a few modifications to it so far - replace solenoid, new plug wires, new spark plugs, cleaned the carbs. it worked fine until the engine sat for awhile. I put on a new valve cover and a new exhaust. since then I can't get the thing to start. Now every time I try to start it it'll sound for about 2 seconds like its going off of starter fluid then cut out, totally unresponsive to the throttle. it'll only do this for the first go around and after that i can crank for days and nothing happens. This makes me think its a fuel/spark issue because its getting flooded so it only happens the first time, however, since this problem started happening i've tried the following. - checked the fuel to the carbs. i took off the hose and cranked the engine and got a lot of fuel coming out - i made sure that the plug wires corresponded correctly with TDC and that the firing order was all correct - got a new battery - got new spark plugs - cranked it with a $^!# ton of start fluid. I havent adjusted the timing but i'm guessing it should be fine if it was fine before and I never took out the distributor. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.