[Cliff R]

"Here is a picture of the timing chain marks, I guess it is completely normal for the crank gear tooth and the mark on the camshaft gear to not line up when you advance the camshaft, like they did when they are installed at "dot-dot"?"

Do NOT "ignore" the marks they are there for a reason.

You are lucky as they didn't used to mark them and I've seen very experienced engine "builders" screw that deal up. The little "2A" and "4A" are the new reference points to line up with the "dot" on the top sprocket.

When you move to a different keyway do NOT use the original "dot" on the crank gear to line up with the cam gear. You move up to the closest tooth then two back to the left as the new reference point. Experienced engine builders would know this even if the bottom sprocket wasn't marked.

A few years ago one of the Pontiac "gurus" built an engine for a board member here and "degreed" the cam and even test ran the engine before delivery. He told the customer it ran fine but it did NOT run well after being installed in the vehicle. Of course the carb guy was getting all the blame with comments under his breath that the "Quadra-Junk" would NOT keep up with his engine, etc. They even sent the carb back here couple of time and the distributor I did for it once. NOTHING was wrong with either so I had the car trailered here some 800 miles one way to my shop to take a look.

Low and behold the ONLY thing wrong with the engine was the "builder/guru" had used a Rollmaster 9 keyway set. He must have decided at some point in the assembly process to "advance" the cam, which he did. Problem was he used the "dot" on the lower gear to line up with the "dot" on the upper gear. Back then Rollmaster did NOT mark them for any position but "dot to dot".

Amazingly the engine ran that way, just didn't make much power. Once we got the cam lined up correctly the engine went on to push the 4000' car well into the 10's over 120mph so the rest of the build was good.......FWIW.......