So this has been an ongoing battle with the 216. Its a 47 216 with a Cater W1 that was replaced by the PO and never run before I bought the truck. It has new fuel lines and a cleaned and sealed tank. The truck starts but it puts out a ton of gray smoke and smells like gasoline out the tailpipe along with little black crud if you put your hand under it. I replaced the points, plugs, cap and wires because the ones it came with were in rough shape. That cut down the smoke a fair amount. It also won't idle below about 800 rpm. If you just start it and let it sit the smoke coming out the tailpipe isn't that bad but if you gun it and let it idle again it smokes much worse. The weird thing is if you turn it off and let it sit for about 5 minutes before turning it on again it doesn't smoke at all until its been running for 2 or 3 minutes even if you gun the motor. I opened the float bowl and checked the float height and it was set to a half inch. Next I hooked a vacuum gauge up and its pulling about 20 inches with a fast flick up and down maybe a half inch of Hg at 900 rpm. Under WOT it drops to about 8 inches and quickly closing the throttle peaks it at about 26 inches. I checked the timing by lining the BB up in the timing window to check where the rotor lines up and the 6 o'clock in the cap goes to the #1 plug, but if you line the rotor up perfectly with the cap going to the #1 plug you cannot move the distributor farther CCW at all it just stops. There is a ton of movement CW though. Distributor off a tooth or more? Off 180 degrees? The exhaust sounds like its missing at a steady rate. I tested the dwell and no matter how I adjust the points I can't get it below 55. I'm using an old Penske multi-meter to test the rpm and dwell and hoping its right/still works. For the dwell I hooked it to the positive on the distributor (one facing closest to fender) and then to the negative on the other side of the distributor. The vacuum seems pretty good and it revs and idles fine, except for the slight missing, above 900 rpm so I don't know why it smells like unburnt fuel so badly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
