I would verify the firing order again. Make sure you know what you have and check that timing chain again. A tooth out on the distributor gear will also give you fits. I know, basic, but it’s the littlest things sometimes.

Where are you reading timing?  The timing pointer on a '92 is on the RH side of the engine, whereas on an early engine its on the LH side.  The balancers have timing marks in different positions.  I would verify that TDC #1 cylinder reads TDC on the balancer with a piston stop.  I would also make sure you are at TDC compression stroke, not TDC exhaust stroke.  I believe this is likely your problem, because your symptoms indicate the timing being pretty far off. 

I would double check the firing order as well.  A '92 engine with a '92 cam would use the H.O./351 firing order.  There's nothing to stop you from putting an early firing order cam in a later engine though.  If need be, you can pop the valve covers and see the order in which the valves are opening to verify firing order.  If the first suggestion doesn't fix the issue try this, but if you say it makes no difference I don't think this is it.  I've run a 351 with an early 289/32 firing order.  Ran like $#%&, and changing it to the right firing order fixed it immediately.  You say you tried both and it made no difference, so I think your issue lies elsewhere, but worth checking if its not a TDC reading location issue. 

Those are good suggestions above.  I would make sure the firing order is correct and that the distributor is not installed 180 degrees out of rotation.  You know the 5.0 HO uses the 351W firing order instead of the old 289/302 firing order, right?

Any time.  Glad you got it sorted out.  Small block Fords, as you discovered, aren't all the same.  A lot of people think that, but they don't realize that over their 50 year production span certain things were changed to accommodate the changing vehicles they went in and emissions requirements.  When Ford went to the serpentine belt drive and hung the PS pump on the LH side of the engine the old place for reading the timing was completely blocked.  They moved it to the opposite side where you could get a shot at it between the smog pump and the alternator.  This obviously required moving the timing marks on the balancer as well.  The thing that will give you fits is that the balancers all pretty much interchange, so you can put one with the wrong timing marks on pretty easy, especially if you run a late engine in an early car and reuse all the early car front drive stuff.  Further complicating it is that they switched from 28.2 oz. external balance to 50 oz. external balance.  Fortunately you didn't have a balance issue, but I've seen that too.  It would have been REALLY nice if Ford had made it so you couldn't interchange the early and late parts (different crank snout diameter or something), but they didn't, leaving succeeding generations to continually rediscover this stuff by trial and error.

mrputz1 wrote:

how can you post a picture 

Hook up with  imgur.com, load pics and copy the proper links for forum posting, easy as pie!
 Photpbucket was real good till they started to charge for 3rd party hosting, bastages.

Last edited by Rudi (4/15/2018 9:21 AM)

The timing marks were moved to the passenger side of the engine in 1970.  Glad that item to check was mentioned in the suggestions!