I put it into gear and it dies.

Add an intake, gaskets and throttle/ kickdown linkage and you still dont know the condition of timing chain. In it for a grand. go get a wrecker 2 bbl that matches yours. 50 bucks.
yeah, I might try and go get one of my buddy's 500 holleys. those circle track 2 barrels. he loves them and has a few. (i will have to rebuild them of course, but at least its designed better than the one I got.)

Well anyways, I just put the motor on TDC and the timing mark on the balancer is accurate. I put a screwdriver down the sparkplug hole and watched it then I took it out and looked down the hole with a flashlight to see the piston to verify that its at the top.