Here's 5 photos I took today. I had my daughter hit the starter until my finger blew off #1. Mark stopped at about 10 degrees BTDC. I used my breaker bar on the harmonic balancer and rotated the engine further to get the mark right at TDC, 0 on the tab. I dropped in the new, red distributor, and you can see the rotor fell to 4:00 position, definitely not hitting where #1 spark plug wire would be sitting in cap. I pulled new distributor out and for kicks put old one in, and IT aligned closer to 5:00 than 4:00. (Picture 3) Then I put in new distributor again and it aligned closer to 5:00, like picture #3 old distributor with orange rotor (picture 4). I put cap back on and took picture 5 for reference. Now, let me say this: If timing is supposed to fire at 8BTDC to #1, and current timing is set so rotor is behind #1 (i.e.hasn't arrived yet to fire #1) then it is out of time and it is LATE. And sure enough, it wouldn't start.
So... what to do? I lifted the distributor and moved the rotor forward (clockwise). It was pointing at 6:00, or slightly past the #1 spark plug wire in the cap. This makes sense to me. TDC should be after the firing to #1 and thus the rotor should be slightly past #1. Sure enough, I cranked the engine over and she fired right up. She ran fine, I drove a couple miles away, left her running for over 15 minutes, but sitting at a stoplight in drive with brake on I noticed a decrease in RPMs like she was gonna die. Sure enough, after idling at the shop for 10 minutes, I put her in drive and she died. And, of course, didn't want to turn over, but a half hour later just as the tow truck arrived, she turned over fine and started.
