What procedure do you go through to set the timing. I did it the way I was told but went to start it and it blew smoke out of the throttle body . its a 0990 f150 5.0L.

I set the dampener to 0 the ajusted the distributor where the arm was pointed straigt back and place the cap on where the dot was to the back as well. Where did I go wrong? thanks

 

Did you pull the spout out on the harness under the distributor? If you don't your timing will be off nearly 7-10 degrees.

 

No I did not remove the spout. I thought that was only used if your were timing with a timing light. So if I remove the spout and redo the timing as I had said I did before I should be good?

 

Ummm, you need a timing light to do the timing correctly...

 

Interesting. no timing light. I'm good at ball parking but not that good. People second guess timing lights let alone ball parking. Use a quality timing light. Pull the spout when checking the timing.

Pulling the spout overrides the computer and doesn't allow it to adjust the timing with RPM, LOAD, or temp calculated in.

 

so just pull the SPOUT and then go ahead and hook up the pick up to #1 plug wire and have at it?

 

When you pull the SPOUT and use the timing light set it 10* BTDC.
Did you pull out the distributor?
If you did you need to make sure that the #1 cylinder is on compression with the crank pointer at TDC when you put the distributor in.
Also make sure the rotor is pointing to #1 spark plug wire when the distributor is dropped in.