350 Timing
 

Trying to help son, They bought a 84 K5 blazer 350ci, would not run was told timing was off, they rip the front apart cam gear was trashed. They have a Haynes manual out there, they installed gears pointing at each other still will not start. My question to yall, if you go by the Haynes book installing the cam that dowel pin should beat the 9 0'clock, if that true the cam gear dot would be straight up, so they turned the cam 180 so that the dots meet. Now is cam 180 off if so its firing on the exhaust stoke? Or does the cam gear have dots on both sides if so they need to flip the gear. Also the crank gear needs to be at 12 o'clock and at same time bal. line needs to be at 0 on scale right. he's in Wash. i'm in PA

If the crank dot is pointing straight up and the cam dot pointing straight down, it should be timed properly. I like to roll the engine over by hand to make sure that the dots line up the second time around, but if you do things correctly, that step isn't crucial. I just like to check things to make sure.

Your base timing should be around 8* advanced. You may have to move the distributor around to get it to fire and then from there check it with a timing light after you have disconnected and plugged the vacuum advance.

350 timing
 

When the crank gear is straight up, the balancer line should be at 0 right, i've on line that alot of these crank gears have different slot on them, I wonder if when they put it on even if dot is straight up they have it in the wrong slot? thanks for your reply.

Maybe the valves are to tight and not closing all the way?

Update, got truck running. They pulled it apart and reset the crank gear so its straight up and they put the cam gear straight up as per haynes manual and truck fired right off. So both gears had to to be straight up to work. Thanks for all who replied.

"That don't make no sense" (O Brother Where art Thou)