Installed new timing chain on my 96 351w and now motor not turning at all. Not sure if I positioned motor at TDC at cylinder # 1 while installing new timing chain so would that prevent motor from spinning? Do I need to remove front cover, etc and reinstall? Also I did not mark distributor before I removed so do I need to start from scratch??
Help.
Thanks.

 

Both the cam sprocket and the crank sprocket should have a dot or mark on them, facing forward. Usually when replacing a timing set, the crank is turned until the cam sprocket mark is at 6 O'Clock, the crank sprocket mark at 12 O'Clock. So the marks are one over the other, as close as they can be.

The cam sprocket mark is usually at the base of a tooth, the crank sprocket mark can be at the base of a tooth, but is often on the tooth itself. Since both sprockets at keyed to their respective shafts, if the chain is put on with the marks aligned as such, then the cam to crank timing is proper. This 6 O'Clock to 12 O'Clock relationship is not at 0 degrees TDC on #1.

Is it a new distributor, or did you pull and re-install the old one? Any chance you did not install the dist. properly, got hung up on the oil pump drive, and the dist. is not sitting down far enough, thus the helical gears on camshaft and dist. shaft can't turn?

Pulling all the sparkplugs out will make the crank really easy to turn, if something else isn't caught or stuck.

Anything else you can tell us, about all what you did to it?

Once you get the lack of rotation problem fixed, re-installing the distributor to proper timing is easy.