fresh 360 runs great, can't see the timing mark?

[questmann]

Me and my buddy just finished my 360 for my YJ. it's 40 over, summit cam, performer intake, truck avenger 670 carb, ceramic shoties, HEI conversion, taurus fan, Yj 3-core rad... you get the idea. We rebuilt or replaced EVERYTHING and when we started it she fired instantly and sound dead on, I was a little suprised even as careful as we were. any way, after tweaking the carb a half turn or so on each side we hooked up a timing light, we new it was pretty close because, well you could hear it. we adjusted by ear and we figured we must be close but the timing light didn't show the mark any where. My buddy said his last 360 was the same way. Anyone ever seen this before?

[zero cool]

I have trouble seeing the timing mark unless I do something to make it easier to see. I usually paint my engines black so I use a light color to make things stand out. On the timing cover, I run a silver sharpie over the top of the timing marks and numbers. Then for the balancer, I run the marker front to back along the timing mark. The contrast of dark engine and silver marks really stands out and makes everything easy to read.

[tufcj]

Are you checking it at 700 or so RPM idle, with the vacuum advance disconnected?

If it's idling too fast, the mechanical advance could be kicking in, or the vacuum advance pulling if it's not on a ported source at the carb.

If those are right, then the outer ring of the balancer could have slipped (I've seen them as far as 20 degrees off). The only way to check that is to see if the pointer is at 0 when the #1 piston is exactly at TDC.

Bob
tufcj

[ironman_gq]

if you set them by ear they may not show. most of them only go to 10 degrees or so and some engines will be advanced to around 15 for most power.

[questmann]

when we fired it up we didn't have the vacuum line hooked to the distributor and the idle did seem a little high. This is my first AMC so what is the recommended proceedure to set it up when first firing it up? Thanks guys!

edit: include setting idle and carb set up if you've got tips for me. The holley 670 was factory set and I think we leaned out a half turn other than that we didn't mess with it too much. Just let it get up to temp so we could change the oil and get all the preassembly lube out.

[runnamuck]

rule of thumb for me is do base timing or enough to get it running, test drive, turn it up a little, adjust carb, test drive, repeat until spark knock occurs on the test drive, then back it down a little. has never let me down yet. go slow when advancing the timing, a little spark knock once won't hurt but too much is a bad thing.