can't rev over 2300 rpms

i had my carb rebuilt this spring, and changed out the plugs, wires, cap/rotor and points as well. i'm having a problem with the boat not wanting to rev over 2300 or so rpms now, and have looked at the firing order which is correct, and every picture of the cap orientation that i can find online. i'm still at a loss after 5 hours working on it yesterday. when i did the plug wires i did them one at a time to make sure i didn't cross one, but now i'm wondering if i started in the wrong dist cap location to begin with, or something else stupid.

for reference, the boat starts great and idles great. dwell is 31, timing at 10, and advance around 580. when i rev the engine the timing goes to about 20. all that is what i have found online to be ideal for these motors.
battery voltage is 12.7 with the engine off and 13.1 while running, so i know i'm getting a charge.
i'm only getting 4.5 volts at the coil with the engine off and 3.5 while running, so i started tracing back the wiring to see where the voltage loss is.
12.6 volts at the ignition switch in the off position, 11.7 in the on position.
13.2 volts at the ballast resistor hot side, a little under 5 volts on the pink side.

all that being said, here's my question: i have a screw-down cap, not a clip-down cap ('88 sunsport, 351w). when i look at my dist cap from the top, the front screw has the 6 and 2 plug wires on either side of it, and the rear screw has the 8 and 1 wires on either side of it. can anyone confirm that this is the correct orientation for those wires? i'm starting to wonder if they are off by one wire or something.

well, those were the readings off my fancy timing gun. timing is reading at 10 degrees btdc, and when bringing up the rpms it reads at around 20. "advance" is what the gun was showing on another screen which i was just including for reference.

firing order is 1-3-7-2-6-5-4-8. i have triple-checked it and i know the order is correct, but haven't brought the #1 cylinder to the top of the compression stroke and made sure that the rotor points to the #1 plug yet. i plan on doing that next time i'm at the garage.

somehow i knew you'd be the first to reply, TRBenj!

I hope it's a simple as that. What does that spring look like? I replaced everything under the cap with the new components, so I didn't have a spring left over at least. I'll look through the old parts to see if the old one can be salvaged.

Yeah, what Tim said about the numbers. Maybe it's just the way you are wording it.

If the spring isn't installed it's like a stutter rev limiter and it will not go above the offending rpm.

With a stock dizzy 10 degrees initial should bet you anywhere from 28-31 degrees all in. All in is measured about 3000 rpms so you may be losing out on some advance due to the fact that you can't achieve 3000 rpms at the moment.

Did you mean 580 rpms idle ? If so that makes sense but it slightly low. You want about 550-600 idle rpm underway in gear so that usually is 700-750 in neutral idle.

Take pics of the old points and the new ones tonight.

Ok, unless I'm missing something, the old point looks like the contact and the spring are one piece. On the pints you'll have a hard silver spring and a softer brass contact ribbon. They go to the same place but there should be two pieces. The brass is strong enough to make it run to about the rpm you're describing. The spring is removable on the new points but should have been included if you bought a pcm tune up kit.

Was it running properly before ?

By the looks of that distributor I think you need to pull the base and see if your advance weights are intact and operating OK. That might explain the lack of full advance.

What? you mean that one time you changed your points? You'll probably forget and do it again when you change them next time in 20 years

8122pbrainard wrote: Notice I did say once!!

Yea, the other times he tuned them up he installed a Pertronix kit.

phatsat67 wrote: Lol Pete. I've forgot to install it once or twice but never actually started the motor without it in ha.

I did run the engine and yes, wondered why the engine wouldn't rev!!

Josh,
That's the strap (spring)!!!

Boom

phatsat67 wrote: Money on you didn't put the new points spring and you're only putting pressure on the point via the brass connection ribbon. They will miss fire horribly at about 2300 rpms. If it didn't come with a spring take it off the old point and put it on the new one.

That was impressive Zach! Josh posts his issue, and 3 posts and 70 minutes later you post the solution. Gotta love it.

Nice one Zachy!

I only made that mistake once, ha.

WTH brand of points comes with the spring not attached or installed ???