Some people are just dense, I may be talking about me, or I might be talking about the former owner of a 80's Chevy stepside I bought once.
I remember it was under a $1000, barely ran, and I drove it home. What I remember more was the giant single plane tunnel ram, the single 4 bbl and the massive vacuum leak.
Fixed those pretty easy, still ran, or should I say barely ran, like crap.
I wondered if the cam was worn down, not common but not un heard of in early to mid 80's small block chevys.
It was a 350. I pulled the valve covers to measure valve lift. I noticed that the pushrods were various amounts of loose and really tight, like a lot. So I spin the motor around to bring #1 up to top dead center.
Imagine a Drill Sergeant yells "FALL IN!", all the little soldiers line up ASAP, perfect straight lines. Somewhere in the motor those rockers heard that.
They lined up perfectly even, like the guy who worked on the motor before me used a straight edge to set the rockers perfectly level with #1 on top dead center. All the pushrods where uniformly tight, not loose. And my heart dropped at the amount of damage I imagined was inside the engine.
I looked at the passenger side, it was the same, all rockers perfectly level. The guy that owned it before me must have been dense.
It was amazing that it ran at all. Fast forward through mucho work, I have it back together and need to to time it.
Pyro is standing by watching as I rough time it and climb in to crank it for the first time. I pump the gas a few times, crank it over, nothing. I crank it a few more times and it starts to cough. I pump it (no choke) a couple of times, hit the starter and it back fires.
Pyro, very calm, "Its on fire."
Me, thinking its a carb fire, "That's normal." -- Maybe I'm the dense one.
I climb out to adjust the distributor and as I round the hood I am confronted with the ENTIRE top of the engine on fire.
Me, not so calm, "ITS ON FIRE!"
Pyro, still calm, "I told you it was on fire."
A short set of censored verbs, adverbs and even some pronouns and a bit of panic later the fire was out, I adjusted the distributor and got it started to set the timing and cam broken in.
Later Pyro related the flames were hitting the hood. But "that's normal" I guess.