[Terry Gartner]

For those that only occasionally read this section, I’m the fool that forgot to put in my oil pump drive shaft, then tired to put it in from the distributor hole and ended up dropping it in the oil pan. So any help you can give needs to be very simple. My 455 will not start (this is the first start up after a rebuild), I’m using an HEI distributor and I think I have the motor on TDC. I have one of those cool tools that is installed in place of the spark plug; as the motor is rotated the piston forces out a brass rod. I rotate the engine until the rod stops coming out (I hope that is TDC) and then install the distributor so the rotor is pointed at cylinder 1 on the cap. Still no luck, I am getting a spark and also occasionally get a (or what appears to sound) backfire. I smell fuel so I figure that system is good as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated.