180 out?
 

I got my supra with the distributor already pulled and I'm having some trouble figuring out where everything should be. I am going to set everything to tdc on number 1 and time it from there, but I'm not sure what position the cam lobes should be in. I'm assuming standing in front of the car, and that it rotates clockwise, the intake cam should just be getting ready to open the intake valves, and the exhaust lobe should just be coming off the bucket. please let me know if this sounds right

If you pull the plastic cover off that covers the cam gears you will see there are timing marks on the cam gears themselves. At TDC they should be pointing straight up. As far as sticking the distributor the way i have always done it is get it to TDC. Point the rotor a little before (to the left) of the no. 1 spot on the cap. When you put it in, the rotor will turn so it might take you a couple trys to get it just right. Hope this helps and anyone else correct me if i'm wrong.

that definately sounds right. I never thought of going by the cam marks, now I feel stupid. What I ended up doing is pulling the no. 1 plug, capping it with my thumb and turning the crank until I got compression and then set it to 0, I think that works also.

The finger on the spark plug hole trick worked for me when I had a car I needed to pull the distributor out of, but not the valve cover or the timing cover. Worked like a charm.

what i did also to find TDC is probably not a great idea but it does work. Take out the no.1 spark plug and put a straight piece of wire or a skinny screwdriver in the hole to where its resting on the piston. Turn the crank until the screwdriver is at the highest peak in the stroke. Im sure im going to get a raft of crap for this one lol. BUT when you dont have the right tools you tend to think of these hillbilly ways to do things....

I don't think you'll catch anything for that, it does work, but you still need to know which stroke its on, remember that the piston comes to tdc 2 times in one full stroke, once on compression, and once on exhaust.

I agree with 3.0trd. I was using the timing mark on the harmonic balancer to tell me when the cylinder was up, but needed the finger on the hole to tell me if i was the compression stroke.

how i found my tpd.

Oh ya I forgot about that I did use it figure out the stroke but to find exact TDC I used the screwdriver thing...