How's it going?

Status update: Here's what's going on with the Lark. After getting him running for the first time, he sat a few days while I figured out how to deal with a fuel leak at the fuel pump output elbow. After many tries at reinstallation and with the help of the SDC Forum... I gave up and ran some fuel hose from the pump to the carb on a temporary basis. I suspect that the NOS fuel line I have has a hairline crack. Once he's on the road for real, I'll have a local shop fab a new hard line.

After getting the fuel leak dealt with, I fired the engine up again and quickly had him running at around 1,500 RPM. After running him a couple of minutes, I bumped the carb off the fast idle cam and the revs came down... to zero. A re-start attempt was unsuccessful - my new Sears DieHard battery had - well, died. Not so hard, either.

Not having had enough running time to inspect any gauges other than the oil pressure gauge installed under the hood, I had no idea whether the alternator was charging properly or not, so I charged the battery up overnight and stuck it in the next day. The engine fired right up, and after tweaking the distributor angle a bit, the revs were up to about 2,000 RPM. The ammeter in the dash showed that the system was charging - that was reassuring.

Again, after a couple minutes at high idle, I bumped the throttle to get to low idle so I could adjust the timing and ... he died. A couple of attempts to restart at low idle proved unsuccessful. Also, once the engine shut off, light smoke began issuing forth from under the driver's side exhaust manifold. Dunno if this is the factory coating burning off the manifold, or if the Smoke Faeries left me a gift smudgepot? I made sure the starter cable was safely away from the manifold (it was); now I'll have to watch and see if it occurs again.