Philipdltx18,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I gave out some bum information.
Earlier in the afternoon I had a root canal and thought the pain killers had wore off. I guess they hadn't.
The pistons hit TDC twice for every revolution of the distributor. The crank will have rotated twice for every rotation of the distributor.
This means that when the steel ball lines up with the pointer it is either on or 180 out. You are static timing it right by watching when the intake valve closes.
I had a similar problem when I put my 235 back together. What I finally ended up doing was watching when the intake valve closed,
then continued to rotate the engine until the ball lined up with the pointer. Then I set the distributor to fire on number 1 cylinder.
Then I followed up by using a timing light when the engine was running to rock in the timing adjustment.
