Just catching up a little here, and a few thoughts:
If you're in a parts store, and they don't know what "15460" means in terms of a belt's part number, I'd leave and never go back. Jesus H. Christ at a Clambake, that's Parts Guy
101:
15 = 7/16" top width,
460 = 46.0"
effective length (it'll measure about 46.5" around the outside). I have yet to encounter an accessory (or equipment) belt whose part number doesn't translate into its actual dimensions. :doh:
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Your blasting-cabinet gloves can likely be repaired with a $2 inner tube patch kit. Hook up a shop vac to the outlet port, as 69.5 suggested, and if you can use some kind of filter on the inlet port (a round paint-mask filter fits mine perfectly). If you want to love it even more,
build a cyclone for it. I made a truly-crappy one using a steel 5-gallon solvent pail, my welder, some old exhaust pipe and scrap metal, and a bunch of silicone. It looks like shit but works
amazingly well--nothing makes it into the actual shop vac, saving costs on clogged filters. While we're near the subject of silicone, use some on the seams of your blast cabinet. Clean all the dust off the area prior to applying it and you can go ahead and use the cheapest crap caulk you can find at the hardware store.
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Take the #1 spark plug out and hold your thumb over the hole while either bumping the engine with the starter or cranking it (clockwise) with a ratchet on the dampener bolt. When you feel pressure against your thumb, you're coming up on #1 firing. Hand-turn the engine to align the timing mark on the dampener with 0° on the timing tab. Proper alignment on the distributor
body is achieved by pointing the vacuum advance nipple at the driver's side shock tower. At that point, the rotor should be pointing
exactly at a plug-wire tower. If it's not, pop the distributor out and use a large flat screwdriver to twist the oil-pump drive gear out of mesh with the cam. Rotate the oil-pump driveshaft as necessary to achieve the right rotor alignment--you'll have to check by dropping in the distributor if your eyeball calibration isn't particularly keen. You can literally play God here, because there are a lot of teeth. Reverse your twist on the screwdriver and the driveshaft will suck itself back into place. The oil pump driveshaft will self-align in the pump no matter where you clock it. Once you've got the body and rotor correctly aligned, you can wire your cap so that whichever tower the rotor is pointing at is your #1 cylinder. I shoot for the service manual layout personally. If it doesn't fire up instantly, you have some problem other than ignition
timing, period.
It's a lot more complex to write and/or read the above paragraph than it is to actually do. The whole procedure takes literally a couple of minutes. If I can change the oil pump on a 440 in twenty minutes in a Hardee's parking lot without marking any positioning whatsoever on the distributor, you should be able to get just the distributor set up in less than half that. I had to do all of it and change the pump. Hell, I even had to run across the street and buy new oil--in my haste I forgot to reinstall the oil filter, and while priming I pumped four quarts of oil onto the tarmac. :doh:
Process is the same with a small-block other than rotation direction and the fact that it's a much bigger pain in the ass with the rear-mounted distributor. The vacuum canister should still point at the shock tower, though. In both instances, that leaves ideal adjustment range for when you do your final timing.
When you
do get to doing the final timing, there's a bunch of power in running the advance several degrees beyond the very-conservative factory spec. I didn't look it up for your engine, but it's probably not far from zero. I ran my '71-spec 440 at approximately 14°BTDC initial; the factory '71 spec called for 2.5°BTDC. I say "approximately" because I set
total timing at 34° and that alone determined my initial timing setting. Obviously if you get any kind of detonation you've gone too far.
