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Thanks again! Do you have any comments on what subford said about which timing mark to use on on the balancer?
I guess I was wrong above. I have not worked much with the 4.9 and was going by the diagrams in the Ford shop manuals for 1983 and 1988. Also I thought that I read somewhere that someone used the line and had problems.
Here is a quote from another post.
“Ford in all its infinite wisdom put two sets of timing marks on the 300. There is one set on the right hand side near the top of the timing cover, these marks are cast in the cover. These naturally are the WRONG marks. On the left side of the timing cover where you can't see them are the right marks. They are on a metal plate bolted to the cover using the cover bolts. The vibration damper also has two sets of marks, wouldn't you know it! There is a large square notch , nope not the right one . There is also a very thin scribed line on the damper, yep that is the right one.”
I want to thank you again for your input. I have to time it and adjust the carb tonight and it should be all set. This is my first experience with a 300 also. The way I determined TDC is: I rotated the crank until the very thin line (I thought was correct) I marked on the balancer was at TDC, I put a rubber hose in the spark plug hole and moved the crank both directions to check that the piston was at TDC and verify that I had the correct mark on the balancer. Have a great day!
I took the truck for the emmision test today since I had 60 days to re-test for free, last day for me, might as well try it. Good news, it passed no problem! Readings were less than 50% of the max allowed, and I have no cat. I used a rebuilt (Holley) 1972 Carter one barrell YF carburetor from AZ (64-1114), and a distributor from Advance Auto or AZ (30-2669), new adapter, cap, rotor, and wires. I removed ther EGR and put a spacer in place, timing is set to 8 degress before TDC, and idle is set to 650 RPM, it runs pretty good but I need to put a few more miles on it and maybe a tweak here and there to get it just right. Hope this will help someone.