I almost have my moter reassembled after a rebuild and set the distrubutor timing before putting the pistons in. I had to take the distrubutor off and the distributor gear came out. Can I rely on the flywheel and fan markings (which are slightly different) to set the dizzy gear? If I remember right the rotor should point at the read mark on the dizzy when the fan red mark is at TDC?

Thanks

i think you can rely on the fan and flywheel settings and to help, set #1 piston to TDC (heads are on? TDC confirmed by valves closed). to set the dizzy gear, follow the directions about aligning the slot on the gear to the 12 degree angle to the engine case seam. be careful and double check direction of angle (clockwise or counterclockwise to case) and the slot in the top of the gear divides the top into a "big" part and a smaller part. don't ask me how i know (thanks to scott gregory). i set the timing on a new motor and the motor ran but when we went to set the timing with a light, we couldn't find the timing marks on the fan. turns out the gear was installed with the 12 degree angle in the wrong direction. motor ran and that gave me fits to finally figure that one out.

I go over this in my video, do you have a copy?

I do have the video but have not looked at lately. Thanks!