OK, i have a brand spankin new 302 roller sitting in my mustang as of yesterday! Now I have the distributor installed at TDC on the compression stroke and the distributor on the # 1 cylinder. Now someone mentioned i should move it 10 degrees clockwise to help it start up... Is this true? Anything else i should do before the first start? I've already primed everything, fuel, oil... etc. Thanks for the help... this forum is awesome, I couldn't have done the engine swap with out you guys!

 

According to thecarsource.com it's 6 degrees of initial advance.

http://www.thecarsource.com/fords/engines/302.html

 

Great wedsite, thanks!

 

The right way to do it would be to set the timing before starting, but once I get a distributor like you have it, I leave the dist snug, but not tight, turn the engine over, and methodically move the dist case back and forth untill the engine fires, turn the distributor to a point where the the engine will run, and then use the light to set the timing.

Sometimesthis will give me a few backfires, and a couple of "no starts", but it dosent take long to "find" enough timing to make it run.