I purchased my '84 Camaro late last year and have been working on it as time and money becomes available. It has, I am told, a 383 or 390 stroker using a 350 block and many performance parts. But some of the work done on the car is sorta shoddy.

I am new to this forum, so forgive my mistakes.

I just overhauled the Holly 750 carb and installed a timing tab, which was missing. I resurfaced the harmonic balancer and painted the timing line white. Well I hooked my old 1970's timing light to cyl #1 and found no timing mark with the car running. I rotated the flamethrower distributor as far each way as it would rotate and still found no timing mark. As I rotated the distributor counter clockwise the engine speed increased till the distributor would rotate no further. I went to the passenger side of the engine and found the timing mark just at or past the passenger side head. I'm confused! Is there another location for the timing tab besides just inbound of the driver side head, cyl #1, or is something else wrong. I am sure that the harmonic balancer is keyed to the crank with a woodruff or hale moon key, or should be.

I really need help from someone with more experience on Chevy engines than I.

 

Timing mark is always on the drivers side on a Chevy. It's possible your timing light is out of wack. Autozone has a loan a tool program and you can use some more trust worth because that doesn't make much sense. Time it until the car revs up to high rpm with no stuttering,stalling, or backfiring and check your mark and re tune the carb

 

I Wouldn't think that a timing light could be out of whack, but that's a good idea. I also talked to some other good folks and they said to find TDC on the compression stroke on #1 cyl and mark the harmonic balancer. Think I might have a good way of finding TDC without using a hard tool possibly injuring the piston. wish me luck

 

some newer engines had the timing tab right behind the water pump you should see the mark if you look down in between the wp and the front of the intake manifold.

 

The outer ring of your balancer has slipped.....
Replace it, stop playing with the dist until this is fixed, then find TDC and start over setting up your timing.