Won't Start, but will turn over
 

Good afternoon fellow thunderbird enthusiasts. I am new to this forum and I have yet to become accustomed to the formalities of such a place. I have a problem with my thunderbird that I have not been able to track down and I was wondering if somebody here could offer me any advice.

A couple of days ago, my 66 thunderbird wouldn't start. The 428 would turn over, but the thing wouldn't run. After a brief look under the hood, I thought my problem was a coil wire. The wire was burnt through right at the connecting point where it is placed into the distributor cap. I replaced the wire and success(so I thought), it fired right up. I was able to move the beast, under its own power, for about 300yds until it started to shudder like the engine was flooded, which it wasn't. I then parked it an shut off the engine to only find that I was back to a engine that wouldn't start.

My next attempt to try to solve my conundrum was to replace the coil since I saw that I wasn't getting any spark to the plugs. (By the way, I have managed to keep the whole car numbers matching in a numbers matching restoration.) I replaced the coil with a BWD E-70. The car fired up the first time round. Thinking that I had conquered my problem, I drove it around campus to give the bird a shakedown run to make sure that all systems were a go. I found that when under heavy acceleration that the engine started to shake and sputter like it did before. I parked it and when I tried to start it again, I was back to square one.

That is the extent of my attempts to fix the car seeing that I am a college student with finals coming up. If anybody could offer me any advice on what to try next to fix my car (it is my daily driver) I would really appreciate it. My next thought would be that it might be the starter regulator. My distributor is still working fine and my carb has no issues. I took the liberty of rebuilding it when these problems first started to rear their nasty heads.

Thank you in advance to anyone who can offer me any advice.

I will be very surprised if it is the starter regulator..

The next thing on the list to check would be the fuel pump., or clogged fuel line.
Also check the fuel filter.
If all of these are ok, check the timing.
Sounds like it might be way off.
One more thing, has the distributor been replaced?
The vacuum advance may be sticking on it.
Bob.

A stuck vacuum advance will not cause the engine to NOT start.

That sounds as you may have a bad condenser in the distributer.

After a long time of fanangling, I finally figured out that it was my ignition switch. When I turned the thng over, it would start, but something in the wiring was wrong so it started to heat up the the ignition key switch (where you put your key in. The specific terminology escapes me). After that heated up to a certain point, the connections that allowed the electricity to flow to the coil, would start to expand, wreaking the connection and it would lose power. When it got hot enough, it would break the connection and kill the engine. Nothing was wired up wrong though. I think it was its time to go. Thank you all for all the help. This little fiasco gave me unfathomable knowledge into the inner workings of my thunderbird's ignition system.