The shaft on the distributor can only go into the keyway one way but the gears on the oil pump rotate 360 degrees and the instructions for orientating the slot at the oil pump with the wide side of the facing up toward the block is "roughly" 9:30 o'clock and it will be "roughly equivalent" to 11:00 o'clock from the top side looking down from the distributor. If you can't tell time then when the gear on the oil pump meshes onto the camshaft gear you can be off. It allowed the distributor to be at the far end of the adjustment range for setting the points so it would run. I don't recall how many teeth are on the oil pump but divide that by 360 degrees and take the amount with the 2 ways the distributor turns to adjust and I bet it will fall into that amount. Or a good excuse is I set it up without remembering it was during daylight savings time.
Forgive my ignorance, but how can the distributor be one tooth off? I thought with the key way on the end of the distributer shaft and the slot in the oil pump, the distributer could only fit in one of two ways.....either correctly or 180 degrees out?
Not much going on with me for a while but going back into engine for some things I wasn't happy with one thing checked was the timing. It was difficult to get points set right and finally went back to square 1 so with the head off. I made an external pointer to set with #1 at tdc. Also with young man down the street who helps me out we determined the distributor was 1 tooth off. The engine would run but very rich so a lot of time wasted messing with carb. It was properly set at right position and points set. After I got head back together from replacing some head bolts I didn't like the fit. I made sure carb was set up correctly using Scouts great You tube videos and carefully studying manual a lot. I put everything on and not expecting anything to happen lo and behold she cranked up and I let her run at idle about 20 minutes. I may not be out of the woods yet but 2 things got squared away last Saturday.
