Basic SBC engine build help

[silvermonte]

So Ive put together my very first engine build. Had a good shop do all of the machine work for me and had everything marked. All I had to do was put the thing together. Its nothing fancy, 2 piece rear main, 350 block, that is .60 over, and aluminum pro-comp heads. I have a few questions.

First is, that the cam is a XE268H-10 part #12-242-2 from Comp Cams, it came as a kit with the lifters and valve springs. When I put the cam in I bolted the gear to the cam and attached it to the crank with the timing chain. What holds the cam in place from moving forward and aft? I read a flat tappet cam like this one doesn't need anything to keep its place in the motor. In this true? If it is not what do I need to correct my mistake.

My other question is, how to correctly tighten down the rocker arms. The motor without any of the rockers tightened down spins like I assume it should. By the time I get about half of them done its a real bear to spin the motor over. Ive been using a ratchet and socket on the crank bolt to rotate the motor and I always worried I was going to snap the stock bolt off, the harmonic balancer and pully is installed as I didnt want to have to try and take the bolt back out after the torque I just applied to it. The method I used was to spin the push rod as I tightened the nut till I felt resistance and then I did a half turn more on the wrench. I normally do 3/4 of a turn but that made it almost impossible to turn the motor over.

Extra info that I dont think has anything to do with it but Ill put it out there. The push rods are longer then stock. I dont recall the length but they are long enough that I bought new ones and Im 100% sure that I have the rocker arms in the correct postion. I can post pictures if anyone wants to see.

This is my very first motor that I have ever put together and with it being hard to turn over by hand I dont know if that is normal or if I did something wrong in the assembly. Also do I need any special distributor gear to run with that cam? Once I get these last few problems fixed I have a friend of a friend that has an engine dyno and I will be running the engine at his place to break the motor in and dial it in, instead of my trying to do that while its in the car.



This is the marks from turning over the motor multiple times with the correct push rods. Im pretty sure that about as good as I can get it.


This is a picture of the motor just because I think its pretty, and Im proud of my first real motor.