Hey,
How did you line up the marks on the cam gear and the crank gear? If you brought the number 1 piston up to absolute TDC, you should then have the crank gear "dot" at 12 o'clock and the cam gear "dot" should be at 6 o'clock. If you do this you should be within 2-4 degrees one way or the other and this would be ok with a stock engine. You should then be able to set the valve lash and then you should be able to turn the engine 180 degrees and have the number 1 cylinder come up on the compression stroke as you are turning it. Remember that the crank gear turns twice for every one full turn of the cam gear. Degreeing the cam is a good thing to do, especially on a modified engine with a big cam and and performance pistons.. The more that I think about this, I am not sure if you can even be off 180 degrees on the cam timing. You may be off on how your distributor is set. You may have it off by one cylinder or 180 degrees off on the distributor. I may be way off here, if I am, maybe some of the more experienced bolters can set me straight.
