The engine is firing, which means he's got spark. The spark is occurring at the wrong time, which is why he's getting backfire and black smoke out of the carburetor. The engine "tries to start", which means the distributor is probably turning and so probably hasn't got a split drive pinion (though that remains a possibility—pop off the distributor cap and crank the engine to see if the rotor's turning).

The most likely possibility is radically incorrect cam timing, and the most likely cause is a slipped timing chain.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I had a slant do this to me once and it turned out to be the plastic distributor drive gear had about 3/4 of four teeth in a row sheered off. The car would run fine for about ten minutes, then lose power and stumble, then die. I would crank it for about five minutes and then it would catch and run for a bit, then die, etc... The dist gear would turn the rotor but because of the missing teeth it would gradually slip it totally out of time.

I would also check the coil. I have seen coils that could put out a spark but not run the car.

Yeah I read what he wrote too fast, I missed the part about the black smoke and backfiring. I thought it was just dead.

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70 Dart, 360, 727

My stepdad called and left a message on my answering machine today that he found the problem. Apparently, when we took the valve cover off, we hit a wire, and it got shorted out. I'll call him tomorrow, and see what wire it was. I feel pretty stupid on this problem , and I did get some good advise. Thanks again to all that helped out,
Tony

I got the answer to what the problem was.

When we took the valve cover off, there was an ignition wire that got slack pulled in it and was laying on the manifold. When the car ran for the few minutes(that we were waiting to see if the new gasket was going to leak), the motor got hot enough to melt the coating on the wire, and shorted it out.

I hope that is all that it was,

Tony