I put it into gear and it dies.

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.
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