1972 Bay Bus Start-Up After Engine Rebuild

[72 Bus Dad]

Hello--
Sorry for the long post...
I'm new here. This past weekend I helped my son rebuild his Type IV and we were able to get the motor installed back into the bus. After we disconnected the coil wire and cranked the engine to prime the oil, we hooked the coil lead back up and cranked. We are getting spark, with some intermittent backfire but cannot get the motor to start. We have the distributor lose to allow for adjusting the timing but, I would be grateful for ideas/suggestions on how or what to do to get it to start. We adjusted the valves before install. Do we need to re-adjust after initial cranking? Also, the fuel pump inlet was damaged during engine install, so we were planning on installing an electronic fuel pump. All efforts to start so far were simply based on squirting a little fuel into the dual carbs to see if we could actually get it to turn over befor installing a new fuel pump. Suggestions on the new pump would also be much appreciated as well as whether he needs to remove the old or simply bypass.
Many, many thinks for your help and ideas.

[Wildthings]

Rotate your spark plug wires 180° around the distributor cap

[aeromech]

If you post some pictures, I’ll post some too
_________________
Lead Mechanic: San Diego Air and Space Museum
Licensed Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic
Licensed Pilot (Single engine Land)
Boeing 727,737-200-300-400,757,767
Airbus A319,320,321
DC9/MD80
BAe146
Fokker F28/F100
VW type 1 1962,63,65,69,72
VW Type 2 1971 (3 ea.) 1978, 1969
VW Jetta
VW Passat
Capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound

[Abscate]

Get your carbs or FI sorted out. You don’t want unmetered gas in a new engine build on startup , that’s just bad. You want lube and oil on everything , not dry metal washed with gas.
_________________
.ssS!

[TrollFromDownBelow]

Everyone else had good inputs - below is my recommendation based on my experience trying to get a new rebuild fired up back in January.

I thought *for SURE* i had the timing set correctly; static timed it probably a dozen times + checked with a timing light while someone cranked.. In my situation The factory timing mark on the pulley was off...way off. No amount of static or (or dynamic) would have caught this.

Was able to diagnose the problem the following way: I cranked while someone else twisted the distributor until we got it to fire. Once we got it running decent, we put a timing light on it and discovered the factory timing mark was over 90 degrees of where it needed to be. I then bought a cheap $20 borescope off amazon to confirm TDC, and then marked it on my pulley.

Search this forum for my thread, it should provide some good insights.

Mike
_________________
1976 Westy (aka Tripod)
2.0 liter FI solid lifters
212k miles

[sjbartnik]

You said distributor is loose for timing, but you do at least need to static time it before startup to get it in the ballpark so you know it's at least good enough to start. Static time it to 7.5º BTDC and then fire it up.

Of course the usual stuff about making sure the spark plug wires are in the right order around the cap etc.
_________________
1965 Volkswagen 1500 Variant S
2000 Kawasaki W650