I had a friend doing a first start on a brand new built 440.
It wouldn’t rev past about 1,200 and missed real bad.
It also ran super rich with black smoke pouring out the exhaust.
They wanted to try another known good carb, but it made no difference.
When I got there I noticed the distributor wires had been spliced and I asked if I could swap the polarity on them and that did it.
It ran great after that, but unfortunately it was already eating a lifter from the screwing around.