[Rocfrog]

Well last night we had MAJOR progress! The truck RAN!!! not under it's own power and it does have a bad knock but it ran!!

I had a buddy come over and help me double check everything and after we rechecked everything with no change, we took the "inspection cover" off the bell housing to see what the starter was do (or rather not doing) and we noticed that it was engaging the fly wheel but not turning the motor, and at this point we had ruled out any issues with the motor because now it could freely move when we turned it by hand at the flywheel. So after trying two different starters with lots of different shims and such with no change, he decided we should check the voltage at the starter while I was turning the key to start it, and it dropped below 3volts! So the battery and my little battery charger were not putting out enough "cranking amps" to turn over that big motor, and we determined that the battery out of my Daily Driver was for a V6 and not a V8 so it also didn't have enough Cranking Amps to turn it over. So my buddy had driven down his big rock crawler so we pulled the battery out of it and gave it a try, and sure enough the motor cranked!!!! Well at that point I was super excited and decided to throw the plugs back in and see if it would start/run. Well after a few trys it really wanted to! We dumped some fresh gas down the carb and it kept trying, so I got a can of starting fluid and we could keep it running while he sprayed that down the carb and I keep the key cranked. It smoked out the neighborhood but it was running, sort of.

So now I'm going to disconnect the fuel lines at the carb and pressurize the tank to see if I can get the fuel up to the pump and once that is cleaned out I'll check the fuel lines at the carb and then check the carb it's self. Then once I find a good used battery I'll try it all again. Once I have it running on it's own I'll drain the oil and figure out where the "knock" is coming from.

Nick