Whats with my timing...
 

Ok well my car has been running just a little off for the last little while. About 1-2 months ago I took off the flywheel inspection plate and reset the timing because I forgot to mark it from my old motor (this is after I put the new motor in) anyways what I am now finding is that I can line up the mark on the dist housing and dist gear perfectly while the front pulley shows the engine at TDC, run the engine for about 2 seconds turn it off pull the distributor again only to find the mark at 180 degrees from where I put it (sometimes less)

Any ideas why its doing this? Timing marks are good for nothing if its messing with me like this grrr, it seems like it should have more power but whats it doing. I pulled the dist about 10 times tonight sometimes when I put it back in (put back in on the mark every time) it would not rev past 2000 rpms and other times it seemed fine until I reved it up... What on earth is this thing doing?

lol There's a very good reason for that. The distributor is geared to half the speed of the eccentric shaft. This means that for every second time the engine is at 0* the tally marks on the dizzy will be 180* out. It works like this because the reluctor on the dizzy has four lobes set at 90* from each other. You could actually drop the dizzy in with the tally marks 90 or 180* apart and it wouldn't matter. It would still work exactly the same.

so then how are you supposed to know when the distributor shaft is in the proper positon... I don't really trust the timing marks and the butt dyno is iffy... Just kinda getting fed up with the timing not wanting to be bang on...

At least yours will start.. I can't get mine to stay running..

I should rephrase what I said in my first post. If you drop it in with the tally marks 90* out it will be timed to the rear rotor. 180* is fine though.

I think you're making this too complicated. Assuming you have the pully on the right way, simply line the tally marks up and drop it in. Then to verify you haven't skipped a tooth, make sure the lobe on the reluctor lines up with the leading magnetic pickup.