So anyways about a year ago I started up the engine and revved it a little bit and all of the sudden the engine started to backfire about every 3-5 seconds. It would slow down a little bit and then pick up speed again and seemed to run fine in between these intervals. So I shut it off and didn't do too much with it until last month I took off the cover to replace the timing chain and gears and confirmed that it had jumped a tooth and that the cause of this was when it was rebuilt they forgot to put the oil slinger in. replaced the chain and gears, realigned the timing marks and haven't been able to test it because I'm still waiting for the new harmonic balancer (old one had a crack in it) so was just curious whether or not this would have done any damage to the engine. Forgot to check the compression when it was still together. From my understanding this is a non interference engine but could be wrong was just surprised that after it went out of time it was still running ok.

No. The slant is not an interference engine in stock form.

Yup. What Reed said. You can spin that thing all day long with the timing all wonky and the valves will never hit the pistons.

hi sl6 sages- wondered about this too. knew that the 225 is non interference, but have been told more than once that the 170 is interference. not sure about the 198. hope all goes well with the oldtimers, uncle dan, chuck, the doctor, etc. doing fine here, but still looking for my dream car ( 4dr or wagon f body with sl6 and 3 pedals on the floor. haven't even seen one in a junkyard. bet one of you has one stuffed in your barn on tobacco road. thanks tons bob f.

Are you sure this is the only reason? Early engines didn't even have an oil slinger. Maybe they also re-used a worn-out chain for the rebuild?

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Somehow I ended up owning three 1964 slant six A-bodies. I race one of them.
Escape Velocity Racing

Its been quite a while since I created this topic but I figured I ought to present my findings in case anyone else may need this information someday. Like the guys said the slant is a non-interference engine. When it skipped a tooth I was revving it at pretty high RPMs and it backfired occasionally. Now that I finally put it all back together the motor runs fine and after checking the compression on each of the cylinders I found that all the cylinders were holding compression from roughly 122 to 117 psi which is pretty normal and certainly indicates that there were no bent valves or any damage to speak of that was caused from the timing chain skipping a tooth.

By the way SpaceFrank my engine came out of a 1969 dart and have checked the casting numbers so yes it would have come with an oil slinger. The motor had already seen a lot of use by the previous owner since its rebuild so by the time I got it the chain and gears were pretty worn out.