Yep, that's chilton's way, and it's bass ackwards
The factory way is crank mark up, cam mark down, this is firing # 1
and the rotor should point to about the 5 o'clock position, then check
your valves in order, forget about the book, adjust #1, and rotate to the
next cylinder, firing order is 1,3,4,2 distributor rotates clockwise.
Good Luck
Wild
If you are suggesting adjusting the valves one cylinder at a time (adjust #1, rotate crank 180, adjust #3, rotate crank 180, adjust #4, rotate crank 180, adjust #2), I would highly recommend not doing it that way. For one, how do you know exactly where 180* is on the crank (no marks to line up).....I suppose you could "guess" but that isn't an accurate way to do anything.
It could be that the non-lobe part of the cam is precisely concentric and as long as you have the rocker "off the lobe", you don't have to be real precise on having the marks lined up. But I prefer to do it where I can line up marks and I know I am going to get an accurate reading and a correct setting.
Adjusting the valves, per the FSM (or any correct repair manual), isn't hard to do at all. And you are lining up marks to make sure the cam position is right where it is supposed to be, so you will get accurate readings.
With the crank mark at 12 and the cam mark at 6, that would be TDC on the compression stroke on #1. So if you are standing at the passengers side front tire, looking at the distributor, shouldn't the rotor be pointing at about the 11:00 position and not at 5:00? At least that is how I set them.
I guess it really doesn't matter, you can move the plug wires around and put them on whatever cap tower you want, so you can make any tower the "#1" tower. So as long as the order is correct and the rotor is pointing right at
a cap tower when any piston is at TDC on a compression stroke it will work.....but that can get really confusing.