harmonic balancer - mark at 40 deg btdc at TDC???

curiouser and curiouser....

owner I bought it from said the dist is original, the balancer is not:

so - looking at this post, let me try to deconstruct this - I'm not averse to being wrong:

1) "You should not be watching the dizzy, matter of fact it shouldn't even be in the motor until you've got everything else lined up."

ans: in an engine that "seems" to be running O.K., if I statically align to #1 distributor ref, and ensure I'm on compression stroke (pull #1 plug and feel for air coming out by putting finger over plug hole, I should not be at 0 degrees on the harmonic balancer - correct? This presumes this is stock timing (seems to run fine on regular). I presume if I'm at stock timing, I *might* show 10 deg btdc on the balancer, not 40? In other words, something still is misaligned.....am I making sense?

2) You're right about the air coming out of the spark plug hole, but what you do after that is spin the balancer so that it is on "0" or some like to aim for the actual timing they're going for "10* or so". Also, make SURE you are looking at the pointer correctly, this is a very common mistake!

ans: so, i got the compression stroke right. On the pointer, I'm using the full width top of the pointer (think it says "timer" on that part? I got that right as well?) and, when I have the balancer at "0", the location of the rotor is about here:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g303/AdderMk2/wrongtiming2.jpg

This may be O.K. for a distributor already installed and timed.....that's where I think I'm getting a bit confused and this has helped clarify what's going on.

3) THEN you install your dizzy with the rotor facing #1 when it's all the way seated. You have to start with the rotor a little to the left of #1 so it will spin as it meshes and stop at 1. You can also turn the dizzy to adjust a little once it' seated.

Until the you've acquired TDC, the dizzy is not a point of reference.

ans: I think I have this a little better......

so, at TDC (based on the harmonic balancer - we'll presume this is correct for the moment), the distributor *should* be off, but if I align the distributor to #1, what should I see on the harmonic balancer? Or do I not care?

Looks like I might have gotten 2 out of 10...got the compression stroke right, and I think I used the right part of the pointer!

hmmm....

O.K. - will try this - I'm starting to get this - i was ASSuming the old distributor in there would show something different than I saw when cranking the engine by hand - something around 10-20 btdc on the balancer, vs 40

so - anyone recall where a properly timed disty was indexed (left of #1, but how far...) when the engine was at tdc? Am I close? I'll throw a timing light on the engine tomorrow and see what I get (after pulling the thingee on the fender)

toyman...you may be reading this wrong..

And I think I was looking at this wrong:

1) I used the dist as reference, not the balancer
2) when the (currently installed and running) dist rotor was pointing to #1 - essentially straight back at 12 o'clock - the balancer was at 40 degrees - that's what was confusing to me - i had expected to see maybe 10-12 degrees off TDC when the dist was firing #1, but this is all static hand-turning of the engine
3) with the balancer at "tdc" (0 on the balancer and on the compression stroke), the rotor was at about 11 o'clock.....

Thinking about this in terms of degrees of rotation on the dist, it might have been between 10-20 degrees off noon to the left.

So, I still don't know if 'sumthin ain't raght', but I am learning a ton about this. Thanks to all for your insightful replies and help

summit balancer + noob = fail!

O.K......spent some "quality time" with the new car....here's the real deal:

The summit balancer has 3 different timing marks on their balancer. I was looking at the marks on the FRONT (towards the front of the car), vs looking BEHIND those marks to the 2ND set of marks at the BACK of the balancer..............yeesh!

So - to recap - I'm a bonehead!

Once I figured out to use the back marks, it lined up perfectly (front mark showed 40). I used the ******* site to get the new distributor installed and aligned perfectly, then started the car and set timing at 10 deg with my sears timing light I bought back in the 70's (I have not used this since that time - score one for stuff that was built right back then!).

wow....that was more painful than I imagined, but if I had tried to do this without "teh innernetz", I'd be in a world of hurt! Thanks to all for the advice - chalk this up to NOOB-i-do!