#1 I have a Holley 0-8007 carb and my gas linkage doesn't match up and I feel it is to critical to safety to have a home made linkage, is there a kit that will adapt my linkage on my 55 Ford Fairlane?#2 The friend that put my carb and intake on says the car is on top dead center on #1 piston and is timed right but the car starts fine and idles okay until you put it in gear and it seemed to have a lot more power that it had before but the car will not idle when you put it in gear, I was also having this problem before I made the upgrade, is it possible where it sat all winter without starting be the problem with bad gas, I put stabil in and had the out side parts of the motor apart where I replaced the water pump, I took that opportunity to do some engine clean up and painting so the car wasn't started and if it is bad gas, what is a solution?
Thank you in advance.
God Bless..

Define "timed right" for us if you will - many (most) of us have changed to tuning that suits our use. I believe you were going to use an aftermarket distributor - what sort of advance characteristics did they advertise? 
Bad gas could certainly be an issue - got a lawn mower you can use it up in?

 
 Steve Metzger       Tucson, Arizona

What distributor do you have?  You didn’t mention which distributor in this post and if it’s a Load-O-Matic style, then it’s incompatible with the later model carburetors when hooking up the vacuum advance.  If the throttle blades are not staged correctly against the transfer slots and ported vacuum hole in the carb, then there will be some tuning issues at low rpms and especially when the transmission is loaded against the low rpm stall.  Assuming the idle fuel mixture screws are adjusted correctly, my initial thought is the initial ignition timing needs to be adjusted.  This must be done with a timing light.  Setting the timing by sound can have the engine starting well but the engine may not perform adequately when loaded (dropped into gear).  The idle fuel mixtures being too lean would be the first item I would check though.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

I have a MSD 8383 HEI distributor, I agree Ted, I don't think the car is timed correctly. I drove the car yesterday, whistling sound from the carb, everybody tells me this is a vacuum leak, the car didn't miss after the rpms were up but died easy when you slowed or came to a stop.

I'm putting in new plugs and the first plug I took out was wet with gas , even I know it's not firing properly if it's wet.

Can you kill the engine by screwing the idle mixture screws all the way in?  If not, then the carb needs to come off so that the idle mixture slot relationship to the throttle blades can be examined.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

I will test that.