Pull the #1 plug, hold your finger over the hole, and crank the engine till you get pressure as it approaches tdc. Turn over by hand, or lightly tap the starter till its at tdc, then reinstall the distributor.

 

Ive been doing it this way. I just tried to start it again and it did its usual sounding like it wants to start, I did however hear two pops come out of the tail pipe. On a side note my electric choke is getting really hot for some reason, im unsure why

 

According to your dot to dot line up, you initially had the distributor off by 180 degrees. Are you saying you already pulled the distributor and rotated it 180?

 

What power source did you hook your choke to?

 

Yeah, i just got done pulling the motor. It feels like the rear main cap is put on way too tight because the motor is very hard to turn by hand, when it should spin fairly easy using a screw driver on the flywheel teeth.

 

Or the wrong sized bearings were used. Was this engine assembled without using plastigage to check the bearing clearances?

 

Im sure it was when it was built like 10 years ago lol. This bottom end has had this cam setup on it before. The only thing I changed was the cam and had new valves/related hardware installed on my heads.

 

Oh that's different then. According to the thread title, I figured the engine was rebuilt. If it was running alright before, then the bearings shouldn't be an issue now unless you spun one.

 

Definitely didnt spin one. I took the oil pan off and everything looks alright. I did notice that my valve springs appeared to be binding when I would crank it over before removing the motor. They would travel down and appear to hang up for a second then skip down a bit, which definitely shouldnt be happening on a fresh set of heads (springs are dual good to .750 lift)

 

You running an authentic 302 with solid lifters, or are they hydraulic now?