A proper inlet fitting arrived in the mail on Friday and I had to wait until Sunday morning after the rain had passed to do a test fitting on the carburetor. I could only get one in blue, but you’ll never see it under the air cleaner. Thankfully, it cleared the water neck with about a half an inch to spare, so I tightened it down and made a list of preflight checks that had to be done before fired off the engine. First, I replaced the existing positive battery cable with a bigger fatter one. I’ve always wondered if I’m not getting enough cranking amps from the existing cable and decided to improve that situation. This took a little more time than I thought because the starter is in a really lousy position on C series trucks. It’s in between the engine and the frame rail and directly over the front axle so it’s going to be very difficult to swap out if that has to happen.
Then I pulled the plugs and put a borescope down into the cylinders one by one to check for any water in the cylinders. I did this because I drained a bunch of water out of the gas tank and I was afraid I’d pulled a bunch into the engine and possibly done some damage. I found no evidence of water or rust, just dirty piston heads that need to be cleaned up with a long idle and some time on the road.
Next, I had to get a bunch of new gas and get it into the tank, which is harder than it looks because I don’t have an angled funnel. After visits the three different stores I found something that mostly worked and put about 4 gallons of gas in the tank. Interestingly, the first time I turned the key to the accessory position, the fuel gauge worked, but it worked  intermittently since then, so I’ll have to figure that out. With that done and the wiring to the Sniper connected, I cleaned out a jug and set it up in the engine bay to catch fuel.
The first test of the system is to boot it up and program it for the type of engine, cam, idle speed, and a couple of other settings. Then you program it, and do a couple of fuel system flushes to run clean gas to the system. After I did this, I connected the fuel lead up to the carburetor, said a prayer, and cranked it over for the first time.
It didn’t immediately catch, and I noticed that the Sniper control unit had rebooted itself; this should remain on constantly. Doing a little Internet digging I learned that other people have had this problem and it’s got to do with a gap in continuity when turning the key. Walking back through the main points of failure, I tested the jumper to switched power on the fuse panel and verified that was OK. The power leads to the harness were connected correctly. That left the ignition barrel.
This ignition barrel is brand new. I bought it the first year I had the truck, and I believe it’s been wired correctly, but clearly I’m going to have to pull it out of the dash and check it over again. I’ve got two spares I can swap in for testing—the original and the one out of the ’67. I’m going to go out and take some detailed pictures of the ’67 barrel and the one in the truck and compare them, along with the diagram I have from the service manual. I’ve been thinking about pulling that one apart and swapping in one of the new ignition cylinders (I don’t have a key for either one) so that could be a cheap way to test the system, with the added benefit of getting the entire truck to work on one key.
Finally, I checked for spark while I was turning the engine over on the #5 cylinder and didn’t see anything on the indicator, so that’s another thing to check.