About a year and a half ago i bought a harmonic balancer from summit, i dont remember which one, but i dont think its the correct one for my application but ill ask my question.
Are tere different locations for the tdc pointer? I have mine pointer at the 2:00 position but when i try to time it, it wont run at all at 6 degrees tdc. It seems to like to run pretty good at what seems to be 38-40 degrees.

I might have bought a thirdgen harmonic balancer but its a non roller 350 from a first gen Camaro, would throwing a thirdgen balancer on a first gen block have any effect on this?

 

The "damper" itself is the same; but yes, there are different "timing mark" locations, both where it's located on the damper outer ring, and where the fixed tab on the motor is placed.

Older engines had the tab with the fixed side of the mark at around 1:30. Ones since around the late 70s have it real close to 12:00. Therefore if you put a damper with the new-style mark cut in it, onto a setup with the tab at 1:30, your "timing" will be OFF by around 40° or more.

At this point, you only have acoupla choices... get a damper with a mark that matches whatever timing cover you have; or, get a timing tab that matches whatever damper you have; or, set the timing to where the engine runs the best (since after all, IT knows AHELLUVALOT better than you EVER will where that is) except that since you're in CA, and they check that sort of thing every 2 years, you're probably stuck with option A or B.

EVERY 010 block is "from a Camaro" (usually a "LT-1" from a "Z/28") unless of course it's "from a Vette". Didn't you know that? The Vette ones come from those particular couple of years that had the real bad body rust problem in the quarter panels and fenders; there musta been about 6 million of those, as many of those motors as there are running around.

 

Verifying TDC is usually a job and a half. Heres a summit U-Tube video that should help. I really dont see how to can accurately time your car w/o an accurate TDC mark. U can only be guessing w/o verifying the TDC mark. Do u want to guess your timing settings??

 

from what I've seen, TBI motors seem to have the 12 oclock ones and the TPIs have the 2oclock ones.

 

I was thinking about buying another damper instead of painting a mark on it, because the paint wont last as long as the little notch in the balancer. This summit one has multiple different timing marks on it, one that says tdc, and then one that has a scale from 0-60 with a bunch of hashs in it, both in different locations..
Im running tpi now, when i got it running, i didnt put the timing marker back on before starting it, and ive been kinda procrastinating resetting to tdc as its running pretty ok now for having not been tuned yet. But i also cant get my moates cable to connect to my computer xD

Everyone always brings up being in california but they forget there still are some "no smog" counties in CA

I should just start pming sofa with my problems, he always seems to come to the rescue