My 440 died yesterday, and I would like to avoid throwing parts at it

treblig wrote: "What made you decide to remove the timing cover???"

It died suddenly while driving, and would not re-start. Spark was good, as was fuel delivery. Backfired through the carb when cranking, and there was a lot of lost motion in the distributor shaft when rotating the crankshaft back and forth. It was the latter which convinced me it was the timing set.