Leaderboard

Remove the spark plug. Rotate the engine until the piston is at the top of travel by using a copper wire (soft 10 AWG with rounded end down) and watch the travel up and down. When very close to TDC, the piston will stop going up and "stall" for a bit and then start to fall back down. Rotate "between these two positions" and you have TDC. Easier said than done. A dial indicator can also be used if you have the set up. Getting into the fan side is a pain with the cover.....bolt screw nut inserts usually "spin". Easiest is to take off the belt cover exposing the drive clutch pulley. On the rim of the pulley you can make an narrow ink mark (or tape with a ink pen line). Do the rock back and forth to find the "going up" and the "going down" location on the case. Mark the two locations. In the middle is TDC. Also, try to see if you can find the timing marks noted in the service manual and mark both with paint for future use. I had a simple trick (POSTED) to hold the chain in place and keep it from falling off the crank sprocket when installing the cam gear.....string pulled for a 3rd hand. I like to do a double check after timing the cam and then rotate to the OVERLAP (EXHAUST VALVE closing and INTAKE VALVE just opening) at the other TDC than Compression. Always rotate slowly by hand to check for valve interference. If something is wrong, you don't bend any valves. Rotate the decompression flyweights against the spring return to avoid being fooled by the cam's AUTO decompression mini-cam/button hitting the cam follower.

From the look of the picture on the post, I can think of a couple things