#1 post on distributor
It is easy to remember which cylinder is #1 in almost any engine. .
"Any" engine covers a lot of ground. Some engines, like the old IHC V8s, used no8 to set the timing. So for adjusting the timing or plugging in the dist, you "have to pretend" that no8 is no1, even though it's no8, except when setting the timing, when it is no1, except that it isn't........................................................
(WHY in 'ell did IHC do that? It's a LOT harder to get to no8 than no1!!!)
Also, long ago, in a different life, I won a sizable bet from a guy who explained to me that "the reason" Ferds sound different from Chivvies is that "the firing order is different."
So I told him to draw a diagram of a Ferd engine, IE 289/302/390/ etc with 15426378, and then I proceeded to draw a diagram of a Chivvy/ Mopar and all you have to do is examine the actual numerical order, and they are the same
So if you start with the Ford engine/ Mopar order, it becomes 21843657, or if you use the Ford order on a Mopar, it becomes 54263781
Years ago we had a customer overhaul a Ferd Y block in a boat. Know where this is going? We don't get much of this up here on our inland lakes. He could not get it to run, and it turns out it was a reverse rotation engine, and the rebuilder didn't check, and installed a standard camshaft. Took awhile to figure that one out.
But it gets worse. This got a reground crankshaft. What this means is, somewhere there's some poor farmer with his Y block Ford truck that leaks oil out the main seal, because the slinger grooves on the crank "he ended up with" GO THE WRONG DIRECTION. And of course the crank in this reverse engine suffers the same fate -- the slinger grooves on the boat engine now go the wrong direction, also.