[AZKen]

You are right James, no balancer. Thank you. Thinking Chevy. May have markings on disc. Sorry, Tom. Continue with thumb test. It's a good way to confirm you are on compression stroke of no. 1.

If you are sure you have gas going down carb throat and sure you have spark....must be spark is at wrong time. If no noise, or trying to start with some firing, the timing is off. If you have backfire from carb or exhaust, it is WAY off.

Your valve position test is one of the ways to set timing. You can make mistakes in any method. You can be 180 deg out of time. It's a little more tricky without a timing mark.

"- Distributor cap removed. Distributor rotor points to cylinder 6 and not cylinder 1 (see photo). Engine turned 10° by hand. Spark on cylinder 6."



Please explain in detail.
If I understand what you did.....
1. You removed the cap?
2. You rotated crankshaft CW by hand until both no. 1 valves are closed and rockers are loose?
3. Then you observed rotor location was at no. 6?
4. Then you rotated crankshaft again? CW or CCW?
All this is Correct???

Keep in mind that there is supposed to be 5-10 deg advance spark. So after initial position of rotor, you would rotate crankshaft back CCW and at the same time observe if points are open or closed. Points should fire just before TDC not at TDC or after TDC.

Reference from member bigblockV6: Probably the same for 305, not sure.

"The one thing that can help is depending on what year your 351 is there were two different locations for the number one on the distributor, 1960-63 number one was in the 6 o'clock position. On 1964-74 number one was in the 5 o'clock position, the vacuum pot for the advance should be roughly in the 6 o'clock position leaning towards 7 o'clock."

He is just speaking about how the distributor will look visually using rotor position and vacuum advance can position as reference.