hooking up plug wires on distributor

I picked up a unit from an 82' chevy truck with a 250 from a bone yard. Cleaned it up, put a few new parts on it... got about $100 in it all. Works great.... very smooth, much less complicated, tossed out the "brain box".

JimG

I have been working long hours and lurk when I can, I have worked 400 hours OT this year so far and I worked about 1000 hours last year. Good to hear about the HEI I know it made a world of difference on my old tired 258, if I was Shaggie I would consider it since he is redoing his distributor anyways.

I was here a week or so ago and posted a Q when I was redo>Hi Jeepster,

I'm putting one of these in:

"I can hammer it back into shape later." :wq!

Well I'm no expert but it seems to me that the #1 plug needs to fire at the top of the compresion stroke for that cylinder. There should be some sort of marking on the distributer to indicate the #1 position such as a line or a dot or somthing.

Poe

Shaggie wrote:

I think you have it figured. The rotor can point anywhere 'you' want it to on this engine as long as you put #1 plug wire in the cap the right place on TDC compression.

To make a stock set of plug wires fit nice, the rotor should be pointing to the front drivers side of the engine.

Having the wires lay right eliminates the possibility of cross fire and misses and just looks cleaner.

Mike

Shaggie wrote:

If you rotate the oil pump slot inside the block you can make any plug you want #1 so a mark would be useless.

IE:

1.) Point rotor to terminal fo your choice 2.) Turn slot in oil pump inside block to line up with end tab on distributor. 3.) Insert distributor 4.) Wire plugs according to firing order

What really matters is that the tim>Well I'm no expert but it seems to me that the #1 plug needs to fire at

Turns out any 360 gear works (on the 258 anyway)... that's what I used. Shaggie has the V8, I'm not sure what Chevy options exist for that.

JimG

That's OK... some of us are a little rattled... when the end is near :-(

JimG

Apparently you can grind off some of the gear from the 258's original distributor and it will work fine as well.

"When you look at the Prestolite and the big cap HEI side by side, they look exactly the same > And they want from what I've heard a hundred and twenty bucks for >it.

Suppose the firing order was actually a critical functioin, and not only did the firing order need to be in a specific sequence, but also at a specific time. Now, suppose you did not make sure the engine was at TDC (top dead center) when you pulled the wires off and took the distributor out. Assuming you did not observe TDC before you started, you can put the wires anywhere you want because the odds of actually puting them in the right place is very slim, and even if you managed to do that, the motor still would not run.

Have you any idea how difficult that would be to do? The distributor is driven by a worm gear, and converting the spinning of the distributor/oil pump into the rotating of the cam shaft is difficult enough, but the cam shaft is connected by reduction gearing to the crank shaft. .

The better idea would be to turn the crank with a socket wrench on a long handle ratchet so the timing mark on the crank aligns with the scale on the block, then check the position of the valves to be sure they are both closed at the top of the Compression Stroke as opposed to the top of the Exhaust Stroke, then put the distributor in with the rotor aimed at the #1 position. The #1 position can be determined by looking at the new Distributor Cap.

In theory, I suppose you could put the distributor in anyplace, but it would need to be in the place that delivered spark at the right time, and that is the tricky part of one does not take care to set the crank to TDC first.

PS It is redundant to say TDC on #1 Cylinder because TDC is by definition the #1 Cylinder. The distributor could go in any place, but for it to work right, it has to be on TDC at some point, and putting it on TDC in the first place is the only sure fire way to get it right on every engine every time.