We have a weird timing issue going on. Installed a marinized 1984 rebuilt 351W into my boat over the winter. Apparently when we installed the new mallory distributor we broke the roll pin holding the distributor gear on. Every time we turned it off, when we started it again the timing would be off. Finally the pin completely sheared and we lost spark. We found the problem and put a new roll pin in. we checked the distributor gear for wear and it seems fine. Got everything back together and started it up and now it sounds like it is running perfectly at about 20 or 30 degrees ATDC but when we move it back to 10 degrees BTDC it bogs and dies. The timing mark seems accurate as the #1 cylinder is topped out at the mark. We thought we might have turned the distributr gear around 180 degrees by accident but there are exactly 15 gears on it, so it should be symmetrical (i.e. 360/15=24 degrees per gear). I think this might be bad thinking, should i turn the gear around? anyone have any ideas?
Thanks a lot!
Robby

 

if it's a new rebuild I would try the 302 firing order, they put 302 cams in 351W all the time...

 

Try jumping the wires around the cap, you might be one or two teeth off in relation to the #1 terminal on the cap.

 

I'll second what Baddad said, but add this , since no one directly adressed it, there is no way to put the distributor gear on incorrectly, short of putting it on upside down.

 

thanks for the pointers guys. we finally figured out that the gear on the cam is eaten away from when the dist. gear roll pin broke. i guess its time to rebuild it again - bummer....

 

Darn, why didn't I think of that? It seems so obvious now.