[2003SV]

It's pretty darn smoking hot and humid here, but I'll try to do that this evening. Otherwise we're expecting rain in the weekend and that'll cool things down. I will say what I see if beyond mystifying. I manually turned the motor over and lined up number 1 DISTRIBUTOR cap to the housing. In theory I should be at TDC as the car starts and seems to run well (a bit hot but it cranks fine, fires quickly, and revs quickly). When I looked for the timing marks on the balancer (there are 3 places with a 0 mark), nothing lined up, even with the 'factory' installed pointed from the company that sent me the motor. Heck, it wasn't even close. I had marked the face of the balancer corresponding to the zero marks and the closest reference mark was about at the 12 o'clock position....

I've lost lots of sleep trying to figure that out... I'll locate TDC via spark plug hole and re-assess. I can't possibly believe I've set timing by 'ear', it starts and runs well, but is 40 - 50 degrees off. I motor can't possibly run being off timed 40 or 50 degrees, so this is a huge mystery to me.....