Don't put your finger
in the hole, just over it. Don't put a paper towel or anything in there either, it can get sucked in on the downstroke. Take the driver's side valve cover off. Get the #1 cylinder (usually the driver's side front-most cylinder) on the
compression stroke. It will be
after the intake valve closes but
before the exhaust valve opens. If you don't know which valve is which, the exhaust valve will be almost directly inline with the front most port of the exhaust manifold. Intake of course will be the next closest one to it. The exhaust valve will most likely be the one closest to the front of the engine.
(picture)
View attachment 128108
4 stroke engines operate as such:
Suck (Intake)
Squeeze (compression)
Bang (ignition)
Blow (exhaust)
in that order.
The rotor tang (metal bit) needs to be either pointing directly at, or on it's way to pointing to whatever terminal the #1 sparkplug wire is attached to. If the rotor isn't pointing to it, take the distributor out and reposition it. You may need to stick a long screwdriver down the hole to turn the oil pump drive shaft so it will drop in. The gears are helical cut, so it will turn while putting it in. Put it in a little before #1 and it should shift and face #1 dead on.
Providing it runs after that, you may need to change some spark plug wires around again. Make sure #1 wire goes to #1 terminal, and follow the firing order, 18436572 CLOCKWISE around the cap. It's a small block chevy, so it uses damn near the same firing order as almost every v8 Chevrolet.
