car is a 1983 Berlinetta with the 305 all stock but the edelbrock 1406 carb. the other day i took off cap to check what points and rotor looked like....short story, i put the cap back on and somehow my **** is like this...but after lining it up you can see the pulley mark is right but rotor isnt pointing right....ugh


Please help

 

What is the problem we are solving here? Is the rotor just not pointing to where you think it should point, or is it running poorly, or what?

 

all of the above lol.... when I'm at tdc my crankshaft mark is like at the 2 of 230 position....I can't get it to start.....I tried getting my timing mark right but but I can never get both the mark and the rotor in the right place at right time

 

Ok, it sounds like you need to re-stab the distributor such that it falls into place with the rotor pointing towards #1 with cyl #1 on the compression stroke at tdc. If the distributor doesn't fall in, the oil pump slot is probably not in the right place and you can turn it with a long flathead screwdriver or a distributor shaft with no gear.

 

I'm lost but I'll figure it out.... thank you.... what I don't get is how it got off... it was itne beforeand all I did was take the cap off

 

so I take the distributor out, turn until I have tdc then put it back in? What if my crankshaft mark isn't right?

 

We were only talking about turning the oil pump. If you haven't moved the distributor and it used to run well, I would not pull the distributor.

Use a piston stop to find true tdc, compare that with your timing marks if you suspect the balancer has shifted.

 

I had to scroll back up to recheck the original complaint.

So you never actually pulled the distributor out of the engine or turned it at all. You only removed the distributor cap and rotor.

First of all, where the #1 plug wire is on the distributor means nothing as long as all the plug wires reach the plugs. It's just a lot easier when #1 is in the 5 o'clock position.

Since you never changed the position of the rotor in relation to the timing the only thing you need to check is where each plug wire is. With #1 plug wire at the 5 o'clock position, the order of rotation is clockwise and the firing order is 18536572. It's very easy to mix 5 and 7 up when putting plug wires back onto the cap.

If the engine doesn't start, rotate the plug wires around the cap one position instead of rotating the distributor and changing the original timing.

 

so I redid the tdc and it finally started I set the timing 6°, plugged the 4pin plug back in and although it starts, it seems to struggle to start and seems when i hit the gas and let off it drops down and feels like it's gonna die....

Here's a question... original owner swapped the stock catnip to a 1406 edlebrock, but now that it's a mechanical carb should the distributor be a vacuum advance rather than the stock one that the computer runs?

 

And AlkyIROC thank you for your help....I truly appreciate it