Won't start with SPOUT out.
 

87 5.0 won't start with spout conn out. Fires up well and doesnt seem to be missing with spout on.. Slight pinging though. Should I reset the ecc before timing? Any input except trash talking is appreciated.

K it's starting fine without spout jumper off now. It sounds like its running great but with timing light on balancer it's off the mark to the left of TDC. By an inch or so. Do I need to restab distributor again?

As long as its at or near 10* BTDC with the spout out, its good. Once you put the spout in, it will advance on its own.

Actually if its lighting up on the left side of tdc its firing after tdc. the before tdc is on the right side of the 0

This is why I asked if I need to restab.. It seems To run well, when I advance it over to 10* BTDC, it seems too far advanced.. Not tapping, just high idle.. I am going to try restabbing the dist possibly

you dont need to restab th dizzy if you can get it to read 10 before tdc set it there and then worry about why its idleing so high . You can not set the idle with the timeing. Yes the idle will change , as you advance it it will rise, but the idle issue can not be resolved untill your timing is good. If your idle is too high when its timed to 10 before tdc then you have another issure to resolve . It could be a vacuum leak or the iac is stuck . You can unplug the iac after the car warms up , and it should actually be up to normal operating temp anyways before you try to time it.

what i mean by unplugging the iac is just to check and see if the idle comes down to normal . You also need to check to see that nobody cranked up the idle speed on the throttle body stop plate.

First off, I got my timing squared away. Thx for the tips

When I acquired the vehicle they had the ISCS unplugged and it was hunting about 30% of the time. I plugged it back in and it seemed to fix that issue. Also I noticed there is no MAF sensor at all, and the leads are just hanging out where it used to be. There is an aftermarket cold air intake instead. Curious how this is possible, as it runs great. Had to replace the entire ignition system (separate issue(I hope))but it's all good now. Will make a new thread but should I acquire a mafs?

87 doesn't have MAF, its SD.

lol, thx Mattdel, very reassuring.. ANy reason you can think of the previous owners (besides ignorance) would have the ISCS unplugged? I think I'm Identifying it correctly, item just before the Throttle body in the intake system.