Well,
She lives !!! Man, I'm beat.............

First thing this morning I discovered no fuel was getting to the carbs, turned out to be a faulty fuel pump (damn expensive new Carter). I took out the fuel pump AND rod from the 440 that had been working perfectly. That did the ticket.........

I positioned the distributor where I thought it should be and low-and-behold, she fired up and ran before the first revolution of the started was completed !!! It was a very happy feeling..... Seems though I might have a small situation. There appeared a small leak of coolant coming out of the passenger side head gasket seam in the rear. After starting the motor a couple of times and running it, it has totally gone away.... I'll inspect it in the morning..... The motor has sat a couple of years since it's initial start-up by the builder....... I may remove the valve cover and retorque the head bolts........ We'll see...... All in all, she rans great..... Now I need to fine tune it and get the best I can out of idle....... The rear carb is a bad to adjust due to the angle of the fuel/air mixture screws and the front carb.....

Here's a video of Jacob cranking it up...... Sorry for the video quality..

The Elephant cranking up via Jacob