#1 cylinder should be at TDC (on compression stroke) and the rotor should point at the #1 terminal of the cap. If the rotor is 180* off, turn the crankshaft another 360*....With the #1 cylinder at TDC, where is your rotor pointing?

If it's way off, I'm not sure why that'd be. I think maybe you or someone else must've moved the distributor and it'll have to be repositioned, fuel sync reset... but I'm not exactly sure.

 

i have a lot of updated info on the truck ive been fighting with. i am working on a 96 ram with a 360 out of a gc. they used the top end of the original 5.2 l. we have been working on this thing for a while now with no real results. check engine light comes on with key so im assuming it is still good.

we have replaced the following parts..
fuel pump
coil
crank sensor
cam sensor
plug wires
cap
rotor
valves
pushrods
head gaskets
intake gaskets
timing chain

we have tested fuel pressure and it bounces around quite a bit. +or- 10 psi
so we replaced with new unit (warrantied it out because it was only a few weeks old.) brand new on does the same thing
originally the truck was (is) a crank no start. we found bent push rods and bent valves as well as a really bad timing set and that the truck wasnt timed properly to begin with. we went thru and rebuilt everything on the top end and put it back together... still wouldnt start.. we found out that whoever built the motor had not properly set the cam with the oil pump so dizzy wouldnt line up properly. pulled cam and put it back together properly fired it up and would idle decently but was trying to get valves to seat in the heads. owner took truck for drive and has no power... so we come back to look at it and the truck will not rev any higher than 2000 rpm. we tried charging battery, setting fuel sync, played with timing for hours before setting the fuel sync, we got it to run decently sat night come back today and truck will not even fire up. cranks like crazy and wont start. will run with foot to the floor but horribly. tried a diff tb and no change. pulled and warrantied fuel pump with no change. one of the coolant temp sensors was broken so we replaced and still will not fire up. pump shows 48-49 psi when first activated but drops to 42ish after it has primed. we have spark and fuel sync was set just before fuel pump was put in and still will not run.... will crank for days but wont fire up... compression testing in the morning to make sure its not weak... any ideas would be great... im out of them now... im at a loss and have not the slightest idea on what else could be wrong.

 

you sure your not just 180* out on the timing? when it is it might still fire off but run realllllllllllllllll crappy. the dist. dont control the ignition timing btw it controls fuel pulse

 

no... i thought that too. tried flipping the dizzy 180 and wouldnt even try to fire. it will start and idle with foot to floor only or with starting fluid. we have tried everything pretty much... im not giving up yet because im too stubborn to let this thing win lol. too much time and effort invested in it now... might be time to start all over and redo... we will see shortly

 

Remove the front O2 sensor from the exhaust, see if it runs any better.

 

tried fuel sync reset and replaced a coolant temp sensor... not truck wont even idle... when we had it running last week the truck would idle and we walked in yesterday only to find out its back to crank no start and refuses to run... i think its time to redo everything and start from scratch

 

+1..........

 

Seems 2 threads you have with the same issue, going to get confusing. I'm going to merge them.