skip a tooth?

[moparmussel]

383 big block,ran fine,let sit for a few months,tried to start,nogo! fuel smelled bad! drained fuel,fresh plugs,tried to start. back fired a few times,couple of pops,no go.checked spark,lots at the plug.fuel fine.checked rotor at compression stroke,lined up with no 1 cyl.set dist to top dead ctr timeing mark,turn over engine,no where near timeing mark.is it possible i skipped a tooth on the timeing chain during the back fires?

[rampage_82]

yeppers, especially if you have the stock nylon geared set, It happened on my first car, a 1965 custom 880.

[moparmussel]

great! thanks for the help.

[dodger1]

More likely probable - btdt on an older 360 B-van. Stick a roller-chain setup in and re-time. I'll bet a dollar it works!

[Rattus]

Be careful with that...it's entirely possible that all the backfiring is unrelated to the timing chain. Have you checked the timing before, and found the timing mark is in the right place? Is it possible that the external ring on the balancer has slipped? That is quite common.

[dodger1]

Well, mm does say it ran well before parking it for a while - which is why I would suspect the timing gear. But I agree that the balancer could have deteriorated over the years and caused the outer ring to slip.

[pishta]

Use the thumb over the spark plug method and make sure you are on the compression stroke, then put a plastic straw in there and estimate TDC by the rise and fall of the straw while slowly turning the damper bolt, check your timing marks by your estimate. Youll be very close by noting the start and stop of the pistons top dwell time, and then picking the center of that range. Note the damper mark. If it is not close, then you slipped. I would suspect dried up Holley gaskets before timing chain slip as you said it backfired, then you need to look into a blown PV, assuming its a Holley. Check the easy stuff first.