Okay, 84 L69. bought as a mess of a project car. took out cc disty and carb. went with an edelbrock 2701 intake and a edelbrock 1406 carb. hei disty. went to put the finishing touches up tonight, and she still won't start. i'm getting fuel, and everything is capped off or hooked up. i'm assuming i'm off a tooth or two on the disty. i tried rotating the disty itself with no improvement. am i on the right track here, with the disty being off a tooth or two??

 

Best way to know for sure it to find TDC for cylinder #1. Stab the distributor in at that point and line up the post you are using for that spark plug wire. Or you could use a timing light and see if you are even close to the marks on the timing tab.

 

Most likely you are 180 degrees off. A tooth off just means you need to rotate the distributor base more.

Why, oh why did you take off the original carb and distributor? Huge downgrade.

 

I took the original off because it came with a non cc holley, (missing the electric choke among other things), the original cc disty and the original intake. the car is a wiring/vacuum mess. So, if I'm 180 degrees off, how do I fix that??

 

you need to find top dead center.

 

Okay, all is forgiven.

You need to find the #1 firing position. There are a couple of ways to do it, the easiest is to remove the number 1 spark plug, and turn the engine over while watching the timing mark. If there is compression on the #1 cylinder (hold your finger over the spark plug hole, put a flap of paper or tape over the hole, etc.) as the mark approaches the timing tab, that's the #1 firing position. Set the timing mark around the "zero" of the timing tab, put the distributor in so that the rotor points to #1 spark plug wire terminal on the cap, and go from there. Sometimes the oil pump drive shaft doesn't line up with the distributor, just set the distributor in on the right tooth, bump the engine over until they line up and the distributor drops down all the way. Start it up, set the timing.

 

Okay, got it timed very, very close after rotating it 180. Then, the battery got too low on charge after crankin on it too much. I'll take it to the parts store tomorrow to charge, and we'll go from there. Thanks for the help guys.