Boswell,
Ok here you go. No disrespect to centuryperformance or anyone else but you need not to get confused at this time in your education. Solid Lifters is what I would suspect for your engine. Call your machinest or whoever did your engine and ask them what kind of lifters do you have and what did they set them at?? If solids do the following asap: Start engine let run for 20 minutes or so til it gets good and hot. While you are waiting for it to heat up. go get a scraper to go under the gasget of the valve cover.(PS you only need gasget sealer on the top of the gasget that contacts the valve cover). A screwdriver and I think a 3/4" box end wrench. A similar deepset socket, short extension and wrachet. Flat feeler guage with .006 for the intake and .013 for the exhaust if you have a solid lifter stock cam. The scraper is obvious what to do with that. The socket will loosen the nut on the rocker arm and the wrench and screwdriver will do the final adjustments. Are YOU READY?: With this method you only have to turn the engine over twice maybe 3 times. If the engine is now hot, turn it off. Take off the valve cover, remember the scraper under the gasget and carefully take off and set to one side. Take out all the spark plugs, carefully marking each plug wire as to where it goes, you will like this later. (I use a wood clothes pin marked 1-6) Next Take off distributor cap, noting where # 1 plug wire enters the cap. Turn engine over using the front snout bolt if you have one, clockwise until both valves on # 1 cyl are all the way up and the rotor in the dist under the cap points to where the #1 plug wire would be if the cap was on. If you are sure you have #1 and not #6 cyl as it is easy to get mixed up proceed to the following:
After you have already turned engine over where it would fire on #1 plug: Set the following valves: 1E, 1I,2I,3E,4I,5E.
Stop.
Turn engine again clockwise to fire #6 plug,(line up the rotor to fire where six would be in the cap).
Set 6E,6I,5I,4E,3I,2E.
Stop you are done.
Before you start draw yourself a diagram as to which valves are which with the setting next to each. This will come in handy as you proceede. You will need to be on the passenger side looking across. The valves on either end are exhaust. See how they line up with the exh manifold? They go like this from back to front: #6 Exh/Int, #5 Int/Exh, #4 Exh/Int, #3 Int/Exh, #2 Exh/Int #1 Int/Exh. Set valves per above instructions.
When done (smile) You have achieved greatness.
Carefully put on dist cap, valve cover, plugs in same order, plug wires using wood clothes pins for guidance. Check oil, drink beer. Start engine. Hook up vaccuum guage, the vac should be higher if valves were tight.(20/21" of vac) You may have a little valve noise, thats ok. And engine will run cooler. At some point soon, check timing again. Points should be .019 for used and if new .020 to .021. With vac guage on engine and with engine running slowly turn in the air/fuel mixture to achieve highest reading on the vac guage. Good Job.
Tim
