My brother came down on Saturday, so I finally had a second pair of hands. Checked the spark, it was perfect as were the cap, rotor, box, etc. Checked the timing again and it looked good. However, with my brother in the car using the key to check the markings on the damper, we bumped it to TDC and then pulled the cap. The rotor was pointing at #3. Hmm...long story short, my timing was off because it was timed to the second set of marks on the balancer. Not sure how that happened as I was very thorough in setting it up, but sheet happens sometimes. The MSD 20 degrees of spark must have been enough to keep it running. Fixed that and the engine woke right up! All of this was masked by the red herring of my initial vacuum leak at the pcv connection to the carb.
Unfortunately, after it ran for a couple of minutes, it started blowing acrid blue smoke. If I shut it off, let it sit and restart it, it runs great for a few minutes and then starts blowing blue smoke. So much that it set the smoke detector off in the garage that is wired to all of them in the house! That was fun!
Based on information I've gathered since having this challenge, I've found this engine has two reported problems since it was introduced. Early engines employed a high volume
oil pump, but the z heads have small
oil return holes. Apparently, the valve covers will fill with
oil and then the oil gets sucked past the valve seals. I can see how my symptoms could be the result of this problem. The second seems to be faulty valve seals. Both of these issues have been reported by several people on this and other forums, but I don't know Ford's response. Ford Tech reopens on Tuesday, so we will see what they have to say. Thanks for all the help so far, it is appreciated!
Jay, you said those Comp Cam seals didn't work. Is it that they didn't fit or didn't fix the problem? Also, which ones did fix the problem?