Re: [FWDLK] 331 hemi timing questions

[William Huff <whuff@xxxxxxxxxx>]

IMHO the best method is to make a piston stop.  I have made several 
over the years by breaking the ground tab off and also breaking the 
porcelain off a spark plug, drilling or driving out out the core, 
brazing a 1/4-20 or 5/16" nut to the top of the spark plug baseand 
running a bolt down.  By screwing that into the No. 1 piston spark 
plug hole and slowly turning the engine the piston should soon 
contact the screw.  If not, screw it down further and try again.  Be 
gentle, you don't want to damage the piston.  When it makes contact, 
make a mark on the vibration damper that coincides with the TDC of 
the timing tab.  Then slowly rotate the engine the other direction 
until it makes contact with the screw again.  Make another mark on 
the vibration damper.  Halfway between the two marks (the short way 
around) should be TDC for that engine and that vibration 
damper.  Once you take an hour or so to make the piston stop the rest 
is duck soup in my experience.  Of course, disable the ignition 
first.  This works well in or out of the car.

Bill Huff


At 7/6/200806:01 PM, Ray Jones wrote:
> You contradict yourself, John;
> You state that you also use an indicator in the plug hole...... What 
> you and others say are great for an engine on the stand, but not for 
> an installed engine.
>
> The straw in the plug hole works very well for an INSTALLED engine, 
> since it's near impossible to put on a degree wheel in a car that's 
> operable. The straw will get him in the ballpark and will tell him 
> what the marks on his pulley are. That was the original question.
> Ray
>
> On Jul 6, 2008, at 1:56 PM, John McCann wrote:
>
>    That doesn't work because there are several degrees of 
> crankshaft travel when the piston is at the top of  it's travel 
> with no visible movement of the piston, the method David described 
> is very accurate and the method we used to find TDC in Radial 
> airplane engines using a degree wheel and an indicator in the spark plug hole.
>
> John
>
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