Have you tried turning the motor by hand to make sure it rotates freely ?

 

I don’t have a breaker bar, also I read somewhere that those 350 engines are near impossible to turn by hand when on the transmission and in the car even with a breaker bar

 

The engine is probably frozen.

You probably fried the starter and or wiring by overloading it.

 

There is a fusible link on one of the wires going to the starter. It probably fried due to constant trying to use the starter. It's not that hard to turn the engine over by hand. A 5/8 socket, preferably 6 point , a short extension"2-3" inch ,and a half inch drive breaker bar or ratchet will turn it over. If you can't turn it over like that, it's stuck. If you can't, it's stuck or locked up as some say. e Even a new starter and a new battery won't help at all. You need to try and turn it by hand and rule out it being stuck before moving on.

 

Pull the sparkplugs, and KEEP the wires in order (or more issues)
If a manual car, put in neutral, and if an automatic it doesn't matter.

IF the motor is free , you should be able to turn with just a ratchet and socket.. if not, spray some Kroil or PB Blaster in each sparkplug hole and loosely reinstall thre plugs for a day or so and re-try to turn.

Breaker bar or a short piece of pipe on a ratchet (cheater bar) may also help.

 

Sadly when I got the car the distributor was missing entirely as well as the ignition coil… the wires are a rats nest of what is left. I’m stuck with that… also I have pulled all spark plugs and kept them out as to not be fighting compression. The car is in park and I have the front end on Jack stands. The smoke is not coming from the starter motor or solenoid.

 

The smoke is coming from farther up under the body of the car like it’s a component above the transmission

 

No smoke appears Inside the car itself from what I can tell

 

There is no component above the transmission. The wiring for the starter follow the bell housing down on the passenger side from the center "where the distributor area is". That's all that the smoke could be coming from. The transmission is not electric, and the reverse lite switch is at the bottom of the steering column on the inside of the car.

 

Hmmm odd

 

There should be no wires or components in the area you are describing. I'm at a loss from what you're describing.

 

Like I said I’ll do some “observation” to see more specifically where it is from. I’ll try to give you a more accurate description tomorrow thanks so much

 

Didn't you say you have the front on jackstands? You should be able to see above the transmission. But the smoke mean nothing, if the engine is locked up.

 

🤞

 

Wires above transmission could be the neutral safety switch wiring or the switch

 

That switch is inside the car halfway down the steering column. There should be no "factory" wiring down in that area unless he has a t400 transmission, witch I doubt it has with the combo he described.

 

He said the distributor and coil are removed,so could it be the yellow coil wire grounding out if its just laying unconnected on the engine ?

 

Might be onto something.🤔

 

He said it smelled like a burning capacitor, on some cars there is one mounted on the coil bracket, for the radio I think,, so it could be with the coil removed and the bracket still there with the capacitor still mounted, the unconnected yellow wire was laying on the capacitor and fried it

 

So at this point what is the op trying to achieve? Coil, plugs and dizzy removed it’s not going to start.

If just trying to turn the engine over a breaker bar on the crank bolt is the way to go.

 

So at this point what is the op trying to achieve? Coil, plugs and dizzy removed it’s not going to start.

If just trying to turn the engine over a breaker bar on the crank bolt is the way to go.

Yep. With the wiring chewed up by mice, the best thing to do is disconnect and remove the battery before something catches on fire. ALL of the wiring needs to be gone through before putting ANY voltage to it.

If the motor won't crank by hand, no point in trying to spin it with a starter.

 

Yup

 

I'm not a fan of using the crank bolt to turn over an assembled engine, I broke that bolt once and still remember it after 40 yrs I never did get the broken piece out of the crank and I drove the car anyhow but in fear that the balancer was going to fly off at anytime. I would play it safe and either use a torque wrench set to the torque for the bolt and not exceed that or get a tool like this Proform Parts 66782 Proform Engine Rotation Adapters | Summit Racing

 

I have a tool that slides over the crank snout. Obviously, it only works if the balancer is removed.

With the plugs out, it shouldn't take a lot of force to rotate the crank. 35 ft-lbs should be plenty.

 

Correct. With the plugs out I can turn SBCs with a 1/2 ratchet. Don't need a breaker bar.

If the engine is frozen you risk breaking the bolt with a breaker bar.

 

I think we may have scared the OP away. 🤔

 

Or maybe froze up Oh $hit Moment. never good.

 

Hey I’m got some news… I think it might be seized… I got a wrench on the center bolt of the harmonic balancer pulley wheel and it I can turn the ratchet with force but the engine doesn’t move. I’m guessing the bolt is going to snap.. 1 am I supposed to take of the pulley and there is something on the balancer I am supposed to attach to or is it seized. Also if it is seized.. what can I do to unseize it. If if this helps in diagnosis of why it is seized but when I drained the oil there was no water in the oil. Please help

 

Don't turn the bolt anymore. The engine is locked up. It's probably locked up due to rust in the cylinders. Putting a fair amount of marvel mystery oil or whatever penetrating oil in there ever so often may help. The other thing to wonder is, was the engine locked up and is that why it was parked? If it's locked up, I would do a complete tear down and rebuild, or replace it.

 

^^^ This.

Was there a mechanical failure before parking it? Even if there wasn't, it will still need to be rebuilt to fix whatever is keeping it from spinning. You can take the time to put MMO in it, but even if you get it turn, you can't run it that way for very long...if at all. I'd pull it and start disassembling it, you may discover that it can't be rebuilt.

If you're dead set on getting it to spin before pulling it out, get yourself a balancer puller from your local auto parts store (should have loaners). Once you have that off, you can get yourself a crank socket and wrench on that sucker until you break more parts or tools.

 

Might want to just hold off on it then. Wait till you have some help, money, and a place to work on it. I know it's not what you want to hear, but you have a big job ahead of you. Like already mentioned, if you do get it to spinn over, it will still need a rebuild.

 

Yeah I’m aware but the only reason I have the car is so I can learn him to do this stuff. I have a place to work on the car it’s in the garage but I can’t buy and engine hoist for a while couldn’t I just take of the front fascia and work on the engine while still in the car?

 

Definitely working harder to do an unframe rebuild. Plus the engine needs to go to a machine shop for cleaning and measurements. I would not recommend doing it in the car.

 

May have slipped timing as those nylon cam sprockets are pure crap and disintegrate. Ask my how I know….this was my 70 z28 with 65k when I bought it.

 

Only one way.

Engine needs to come out.