318 LA rebuild after losing a valve seat

AJ/FormS said
I think it's the other way around; for some unknown reason the Parkrod is jammed, and because it is jammed, it causing the trans to rotate Once the rear tires are off the ground, the trans at it's nomally installed working angle, and the tires both turn by hand; the parkrod would normally not be preloaded and should pop tight out.
If it doesn't, you have two choices; 1) pop the tailshaft off and drive the rod forward and unlocking the pawl, or
2) drop the VB and pull the rod out.

I noticed the front of your trans is quite high. I suppose the driveshaft angle may be jamming it up. I don't think so, but I also don't know so , on account of I've never encountered a problem with that.

So, I recently bled the brakes, and while I had the rears in the air, they rotated freely. Come to think of it, the shifter was in the park position. If I moved the shifter into another position, like neutral or drive, and then rotated the wheels, then should it pop out? I did consider removing the tailshaft and moving the car to level ground, but maybe I'll pop it off and do what you suggested.

Yes, the transmission is higher than normal. It's being held up by a ratchet strap because when I was moving it around, the driveshaft was angled so that the universal was rubbing on the body. I'll drop it down and see what I can do.

AJ/FormS said
I disagree;
Each tooth on the sprocket represents I think 14*. If you botch the install and don't degree it for verification... your cam could be 14* retarded or 14* advanced. But if the keyway in the cam is off be a couple of degrees, then you gotta throw that into the pot, same with the crank keyway, and chain stretch. So if you don't degree your cam there is a lotta lotta room for error
Those dots and symbols are just there to help you find a base line.
To help you understand what say, 4degrees means;
4* advanced from straight up represents about 5 or 6 psi cylinder pressure increase. No big deal if you have low-cylinder pressure to begin with; and 4* advance also causes your power peak to come down about 100 rpm.
Of course 4* retard does the opposite. So just 4* either way represents a total difference of ~12 psi and 200 rpm.
And we haven't even talked about tuning issues.
What about 14*?
Well; I recently met a guy online that had discovered exactly that and found his cam advanced one tooth; and his engine was not happy about that,nor was he.

I stand corrected. I think my thought was that it wasn't hard to understand how to install it to theoretically get X amount of advance or retard, but I wasn't thinking of the margin of error factored in regarding getting timing correct.

To further prove that I'm a beginner, I pose this question - if the cam is installed with #1 at TDC, theoretically it should be timed correctly, right? Then confirmed by degreeing? If it's off by a tooth, that would mean it's off relating to the distributor gear, right?