It's never ran for me.

 

Me neither!

 

No motor will run with the timing 180° out, however it's easy to have the distributor backwards and still run fine. In essence it's 180° off, but the timing is spot on. Any distributor can be installed at any angle you want and still have power and acceleration like it's brethren.
Typically you line up the timing mark to install the distributor, but since you have a 4 stroke motor the crankshaft rotates 2X for a single rotation of the cam shaft. Without further diagnosis, sticking in the distributor with the timing mark at TDC gives you a 50/50 chance of being right. If you're 180° out, sometimes it's easier just to install the plug wires 180° out to match.
You'll have the same hp, torque, vacuum, mph and mpg as always, no matter what angle the distributor is. As long as the timing is spot on 😁

Gotta remember that pugsy and rwenuts are both canucks, it's still -10°F outside and neither one has seen much of the sun for 9 months or better. Their brains are frozen. My first plug wire change when I was 14, I had a SBC with a backwards distributor. My motor ran fine, other than the 3 quarts of oil per fill up, but the wires were 180° off. I decided not to temp fate and replaced the wires one by one. I then brought this up to the head tech (only other tech besides me) the next day. He explained the deal, I never straighten the wires. Why bother! 😂

 

it will run better if the cam timing and ignition timing are correct

 

Thanks guys that's what I thought, but for some reason I was going down a rabbit hole of second guessing, after reading a few different thing on the internet.

 

180 out won’t run, it will try and there will be a lot of flame but no it won’t run.

What will kind maybe run is the mesh off a tooth. What happens here is as the distributor is remove as the gear mesh is disengaging the distributor shaft is turning and this is also turning the oil pump drive shaft till it separates from the distributor. This almost always is one tooth. Doesn’t seem like much till you realize there are 13 teeth. Thirteen teeth is 27.7 degrees of distributor rotation which is turning half crankshaft rotation so doubling that 27.7 degrees would be 55.4 degrees off at the damper‘s timing marks. That’s a lot more than most guys expect and probably beyond the timing marks if you are using a stock damper.

Its easy to run out of room when trying to make up for this by twisting the distributor as eventually the vacuum advance can collides with some thing.

Probably the easiest thing is get the vacuum advance can in the best position allowing freedom to rotate the distributor to adjust timing. Then getting number 1 at TDC firing and see which cap terminal the rotor is pointing and call that number 1 then go around the firing order from there, that avoids taking the distributor out and going back through the mess of not aligning by another tooth.

If you’re willing to take the time to go through the drill to get things positioned as the factory would, I’d recommend getting a pre-oiling tool because it’s easy to rotate the oil pump shaft to get it indexed so the distributor is positioned correctly. The factory position is really simple in that the rotor and matching cap terminal points at number 1 and of course the cam has both valves closed and the piston is at TDC to start the power stroke. At the same time as this is established the distributor body has the hose nipple of the vacuum advance canister pointing at cylinder number 6 which is in distributor rotation speed 180 away from cylinder 1. Cylinder 6 is also at TDC but it is completing its exhaust stroke and starting its intake stroke. A 4 cycle engine uses 720 degrees for a full cycle so in crankshaft degrees there are 360 degrees between the strokes number 1 and 6 are on but both of these pistons arrive at TDC and BDC at the same time just doing different things. Obviously these are really basic things but in the heat of getting the effing thing to run often we‘re not thinking of basics and I’m guilty of this think as well as anyone.

A cool trick I picked up along the way and a good example of it is in a vid by Myvintageiron see the link, he puts this all together better than my words.

Bogie

 

Another oil pump alignment solution -
I had to pull my distributor last month to fix an intake leak, so I bumped the starter until the rotor pointed at about TDC and was lined up with a vacuum boss on the intake (reference point). When I reinstalled it I could not get the rotor lined up and also get it to drop onto the oil pump. Turning the engine over by hand with plugs in it seemed like a PIA, so I decided to align the oil pump instead. I made the tool in the attached picture and it worked well to turn the shaft and get it aligned.

 

If you got it in the wrong position, and want to do it the easy way, you can "walk" the distributor around by lifting it up, not all the way, enough to turn one tooth, drop it down and it will turn the oil pump drive shaft on each go. It doesn't take long to walk it around like this and you need not play acrobat to look down the hole to see the pump drive position.

 

Your pump primer makes a good pump shaft turning tool.

 

You can do it even quicker than the video posted.
No need to turn the crank by hand until the drive lines up and the distributor shaft drops into the oil pump drive.

Just hold down loosely on the distributor body and bump crank the starter motor a handful of times.
Only takes a few seconds and you're there, it drops. Tighten the clamp and you're done. Wire it up, Fire it up and get the timing light on it.

 

I think it's important to distinguish some differences. Unless you have a points distributor, the distributor can be 180 out, or for that matter it can be 45, 90, 135, 225, 270, or 315 degrees out as well. As long as your plug wires are on the appropriate posts, it doesn't matter.

If the SPARK timing is 180 out, it won't run because you're trying to fire the wrong cylinder at the wrong time. Like for instance if you moved all the plug wires around the cap 4 posts, the actual spark timing is 180 out, or if you installed your wires referencing the rotor while your at TDC for exhaust on #1 instead of compression. In the case of a common SBC firing order, you'll be sparking 6 when your #1 cylinder is waiting for fire.

There is no such thing as a cam being 180 out. If you install the cam 180 out and turn the crank one turn, the cam and crank are magically lined up. Nothing about the crankshaft determines which TDC is the compression or exhaust stroke, the cam does. You can take a running, properly timed engine, remove the chain, turn the crank one turn (assuming no valve interference), re-install the timing chain, and it will run exactly like it did before. In the same way, you could take the timing chain off and turn the cam 1/2 a turn (180 degrees), re-install the timing chain, and it will run the same. In theory, the cam is 180 "out" every other rev of the crank because it turns at half the speed of the crank.

 

On te old [ 265 ] 1955 chevy engine if the dist. was set in at the wrong angle it would shut off the oil to one side of the lifters. ------ just thinking back a few years.

 

Know this isn’t happening but need to share because I know my friend who “ helped” me do my first tune up on my 71 non hei chevelle……and then it wouldn’t run worth a sh&$. He handled the points and rotor while I did the plugs. After a month of not getting it to run correctly, my neighbor )who owned a fleet of trucks ) came over to look. Turns out the rotor was installed 180 off. Yep, he put (forced is a better word) the round peg in the square distributor hole and vice versa. Needless to say I passed on future help.