Thread: Harmonic balancer on 454 has 4 timing marks.....

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Repoman, seems to me you have a good handle on #1 at TDC now, or close enough to true TDC for the valves on #1 to be closed, and your step-by-step process should give you some more idea about exactly which cylinders have problems, and whether it's valves hanging open or not. It doesn't sound like you're planning to pull the timing chain, so talk about degreeing the cam or setting up the engine is not really of much value for where you are in the process, IMO. Now it may be that whoever installed that hot cam didn't degree it right way back when, but for now you're assuming that the engine was set up right because it ran right at one time. From what I've read you spent some money on what you were told was a good engine from your boat dealer, you're finding that it may not have been quite as good as you were led to believe, and now you're trying to understand just how bad it is before you decide to pull it out and either start fresh, or maybe have that one rebuilt. I would be doing exactly the same thing before I made a decision on several thousand dollars!

If your Saturday is going to be dedicated to this mystery I hope you have your answers early, and can then move on with a decision that gets you back on the water enjoying the boat. Best of luck to you!

Originally Posted by rspears

Repoman, seems to me you have a good handle on #1 at TDC now, or close enough to true TDC for the valves on #1 to be closed, and your step-by-step process should give you some more idea about exactly which cylinders have problems, and whether it's valves hanging open or not. It doesn't sound like you're planning to pull the timing chain, so talk about degreeing the cam or setting up the engine is not really of much value for where you are in the process, IMO. Now it may be that whoever installed that hot cam didn't degree it right way back when, but for now you're assuming that the engine was set up right because it ran right at one time. From what I've read you spent some money on what you were told was a good engine from your boat dealer, you're finding that it may not have been quite as good as you were led to believe, and now you're trying to understand just how bad it is before you decide to pull it out and either start fresh, or maybe have that one rebuilt. I would be doing exactly the same thing before I made a decision on several thousand dollars!

If your Saturday is going to be dedicated to this mystery I hope you have your answers early, and can then move on with a decision that gets you back on the water enjoying the boat. Best of luck to you!

Thank you! That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

When I posted that pic of the timing chain marks and was told it was 180 out. I looked though every book and every internet page I could find, with very little hard evidence of the correct marks(everyone differed). So it made me mad. I figured I needed get an outcome at least for next guy who may need to reference this thread for his/her problem.

And for that person, here goes. Please correct me if it's wrong, but this is what I've gathered from everything I've read(which was way too much).

Technically if your pulling your running, stock motor apart, you will find the marks at 12/12.

But if your building a motor 6/12 is right. Most articles will reference these points for easy cam installation, while setting up your timing chain and gears. The article then usually follows the rest of your motor build, before later getting back to installing dist and setting up base timing. It's here where it's likely not even mentioned, but those marks are moved to #1 TDC or 12/12.

Of course this is if your working with stock components, which I'm not. I have no business touching a degree wheel and given my cam specs(which Im still waiting on), who's know how far off I am.

BTW. Rain held me off this morning. So maybe tomorrow.