Another timing question

as said before...run a yellow or white mark on the balancer.....make sure your lights on your number one wire and make sure you dont have it set to the wrong number of cylinders on your timing gun. also, there should not have been a way to set the ballancer off tdc as it should be key wayed...unless of course your keyway is sheerd...in wich case you have some work ahead of you lol. but i doubt that. if anything,when your bulder was building your engine,he may have not aligned the cam sprocket correctly with the crank sprocket wich would show your timing as off. I do timing the old school way. pull number one cylinder spark plug,put finger over the hole, then either arc at cylinoid with a screw driver or have someone bump the ignition for you until you pop off the compression stroke (TDC) then make sure your rotor on your distributer is pointing at the correct cylinder. toss the plug back in,put your cap on and your on time!.....look at your balancer mark and see if it is set on the timing tab for tdc....if it is not,then someone set your engine up wrong.....or your screwed up on one of the steps I mentioned somehow lol.... old school way of doing it (yes) but a very effective and easy way none the less if you are trouble shooting ....and without having to use vacume gauge or and other speacialty tools. you should need no tools at all doing it the way I mention,not even a timing light unless you want to set the time to a specific advance/retard degree....hope this helps and that may help you solve your problem, good luck!