When the timing marks are aligned, as shown in the picture, the piston is at TDC,true, but in reference to camshaft/crank phasing, the engine is in overlap, where as mentioned, the valves are partially opened/closing. If you put the distributor in the engine with the timing marks aligned as shown,and put the rotor at #1 terminal, it will be 180 degrees out of time. For the engine to be in time, you will either need to rotate the engine one complete revolution back around to TDC,the dot on the crank gear will still be pointing up like shown, but the cam gear dot will be at the 12:00 position instead of the 6:00 position as shown, then install the distributor pointing at #1. It is kinda' misleading to think that when the gears are dot to dot, the engine is at the #1 firing position, but this is done mostly to assure the timing gears or chains are aligned more accurately. It would be real easy to get the gears misaligned if you tried to index the gears with the cam gear at the 12:00 position and the crank gear at the 12:00 position as well, instead of closer together as shown in the picture. From the picture, it looks as if the cam/crank are in time as they should be, as long as the piston is truly at TDC as the dot on the crank gear seems to indicate. Take your #1 spark plug out and rotate the engine gently with your finger over the spark plug hole, as the piston come back up toward TDC, you will feel the piston start to push air out against your finger. Now notice the alignment marks on your cam/crank gears, they should both be at the 12:00 position, now look at your rotor, if it isn't pointing at #1 on your distributor cap, thats your problem. Make it point at #1 and you will be good to go, provided you have determined the outer ring on your balancer is accurately showing your TDC reference, as you were questioning earlier....
Last edited by CNC-Dude; 06/17/09 02:04 PM.
