so after rebuilding the carb and sticking it on there( holley 750 vac. sec.) im getting back fire and someone told me it might be 180 off, so i took the dist. out. took the number one spark plug out, used the starter to turn it till i found the compression stroke. lined it up manual to 0* tdc, droped the dist. in with the roter pointing towards the first cylinder, put the cap back with the spark plug wire for the first cylinder also pointing towards the first cylinder.

btw its a mallory dist, external ignition coil set up. and it looks pretty clean inside the cap

after a couple of tries and some back fireing. i watched a few more youtube install video's ( the westech ones where they install msd distributors on a 350) and found out that i need to set the initial, or idle timing before i drop the dist. in with the roter pointing towards the first cylinder.

it said for most 350's its about 12*, but i want to know what a good base initial advance is for the 454.

its got small oval heads with stock internals, an rv cam, and basically a stock intake manifold, thru transom headers  etc. etc.

so whats a good btdc degree to try and get the engine to start and at least idle?

thanks again i appreciate the help

( timing with a timing light will be after i could get the engine to stay on )

Would 20* be total or initial?

Indmar marine says 10*-12* initial.

my .02
Daniel
Mash on it

I think he means just to get it fired and running until you can get a timing light on it.

Exactly,, sorry I didn't make myself more clear.  What I meant was a little extra advance on fire up usually works better.

Once you have it running, you really only need to be concerned with the total advance.  You can put the light on it right away and make sure you have some advance in it.  If it's retarded, the exhausts will get hot pretty quick.

Give the engine a few minutes to build a bit of temperature, then you will need to set timing by bringing RPM up while watching the timing mark.  Continue raising RPM until the mark stops moving to find "total" advance.  Somewhere around 34-36 total probably will work the best. 

The initial timing can and will vary depending on the distributor and what modifications (if any) have been done to it.  MSD has some good videos about how to install a distributor and set ignition timing.  http://www.setyourtiming.com/video.html