Hey guys. I just finished a major job of replacing my head gaskets, intake manifold and manifold gaskets, replacing hoses, deleting my A/C, etc. etc. Now that everything is FINALLY back together...I realized I did not mark the position of my rotor. I am going to attempt to get the first piston at TDC...I was wondering if, when I'm looking into the number one spark plug hole, what valve should I be looking at and what position should it be in to know the piston is at TDC? Hopefully I can get it close enough to get her started up and drive her the couple blocks to my mechanic. It's been a good month too long without drving my car...

Of course, be sure you are rotating the engine in the 'running' direction. You can tell the intake a exhaust valve apart by where they line up with their manifolds (exhaust valve inline with exhause manifold pipe section).

When rotating, watch for the exhaust to cycle open then close and then the intake to cycle. When the intake closes completly, the piston should be on its way up to your TDC on the compression stroke.

Here is a graph from comp cams that may help visualize. Both TDC's are shown, but you want the one all the way on the right side of the graph.

So as I watch the intake valve open and then close indicating its just shy of TDC, would the mean it is firing on that cylinder or the next cylinder in the firing sequence?

When the intake valve closes it will be well before TDC. More like BDC.

Turn the engine over and watch the valves. If both valves are closed during the upward stroke, you'll be at TDC firing when you get to the top.

So there's really no way to find TDC just by watching the valve open/close through the spark plug hole of the number 1 cylinder?

Sure, if you can actually see anything in there. Taking the valve cover off is probably easier though.

just put #1 slug at the top and stab the dizzy

If if blows fire out the carb your 180* out, pull dizzy and rotate 180*... done deal!

Probably save 30min worth of pissing around!

For what you're attempting to do, it's fine. As mentioned above, watch the valves. Once the intake valve starts to close, you'll be coming up on the compression stroke. Watch the timing mark on the balancer. When it reaches zero on the pointer, the piston can be considered at TDC (not accurately unless the timing is degreed).

Now to set it close enough to fire up the engine, move the mark on the balancer to whatever your base timing is set at. Lets say 8* BTDC. That should be enough to get the engine started. So the mark on the balancer is now at the 8* BTDC mark on the pointer.

Now take the cap off the distributor. Drop in the distributor until you get it lined up with the oil pump drive and the rotor is pointed close to where the #1 plug wire will go on the cap. Now remove the rotor so you can see the magnetic pickup. See the 8 little points? Those tell the ignition when to collapse the coil field and fire a plug. Rotate the distributor until they line up with the pickup. Clamp the distributor down, reinstall the rotor and cap.

The ignition is now timed close enough that you should be able to fire the engine up the first time. You'll still need to put a timing light on to fine tune the timing. You can still be off a few degrees.