timing gear alignment.

I'm not, nor was I talking about timing the distributer.


I was talking timing the valves.

And yes I forgot the op was on a slant so 6 and 12 dont apply.

But having the dots align does (about 10 and 5)

Timing the dist requires the engine to be at tdc on the compression stroke of the #1 cyl.
Since the OP included the distributor in this discussion, I felt it was necessary to include it in my responses.