Long story short, I had to replace the timing gears on my TPI 305. I got it started but was worried about the timing, so I bought a timing gun and tried it on the engine, using these instructions: https://www.thirdgen.org/settingtiming
But then I came across this post in the 'Banned topics' thread:
So these two seem to contradict themselves. I haven't changed the timing, only looked at the blanacer with the timing gun. Can you tell me which one is right? Because the timing measurements on the engine are at about 2oclock relative to the balancer, but the timing marks on the balancer are at about 11oclock. What should I do?

 

The correct way to do the timing is to set the engine timing to whatever it says on the smog label with the esc bypassed so there is no electronic advance. If the smog label has no marking for timing set the car to 0 deg advanced. the ecm will take over from there. If you set the timing to anything other than what the smog label says the ecm will still think the car is set to the smog value even though it will be different. for instance if the smog label says 0 deg and you set it to 4 deg then the computer will be over advancing the motor by 4 degrees because it thinks it is at 0. This can be a very dangerous condition because detonation is highly likely.
Happy

 

Ok thanks, I'll try that tomorrow morning.