Doug, several others have offered it the chain could be loose/sloppy or tooth broke on timing gear and jumped. That would seem reasonable to me and explain how the distributor became physical position wrong. How else would you explain it?
The dist was pulled out of the motor, and the dist drive were pulled out of the motor, first post.
Once those were pulled, we have no way of knowing if they were reinstalled in the exact same position when they were reinstalled. Any reference to timing, at that point is a lost cause. It was not checked before it was pulled apart.
If the motor now runs, the timing chain and gears are in the proper place. With a timing chain that has slipped one tooth, the motor will barely run. If it has slipped 2 teeth, it won't start at all. That said, the chain could be stretched, and the gears may be worn, do to the miles on the motor (40,000 mile on a Mopar motor is not a lot of miles, but the amount of abuse the motor has seen does take its tole). That is/was not the cause of your problem. If there were high quality parts used in your motor when it was rebuilt, I would be surprised if the chain or gears are worn very much at all in 40,000 miles. A worn chain/timing gears can cause the ignition timing to retard and could cost you ultimate performance, which would get progressively worse until it jumped a tooth. You can detect a worn timing chain & gears with a timing light watching the timing marks when the motor is idling. The timing mark will move around a few degrees without you doing anything.
The tick when the timing was dialed in does give me some concern, given the compression test numbers. Mopar allowed a 20% difference in compression between the highest cylinder and the lowest cylinder before recommending a rebuild. You are right at that cut. Now that you got the motor running again, I think I would recheck the cylinder compression test and see how closely it matches the first compression test. You might have better numbers now.
The tick could be an exhaust leak, a bad ignition wire, a burnt valve, a cracked piston, a broken crank, a chunk of carbon, a bad lifter, a bad cam lobe, a bent push rod, a damaged rocker, or a few other things.
You still don't know what caused your inimical problem. It was not the timing chain or timing gears, and it was not the oil pump. Back the rev limiter down to about 6200 and stay off the rev limiter! Shift sooner! It will make the motor a lot happier, it will live longer. It will not hurt your performance much, might even be faster! Gene
