Distributor installation

angeldust72 said
a couple of folks told me that the #1 cylindar cap tower should be at 6 o'clock looking at the firewall. But to me that is not possible since the oil drive slot is pointing at the 1 cylinder bolt when at TDC. The rotor when at TDC actually is something like at 10 o'clock, and aren't I right that rotor would be at the relocutor (contact )when firing at TDC?

Lets back up the boat here angeldust that distibutor only rotates 1 revolution for every 2 revolutions of the crankshaft. If you haven't removed the oil pump drive gear and shaft assembly then you can only put the distibutor in the hole in 1 of 2 positions. Firstly make sure that No.1 cylinder is at Top Dead Center, at the end of its compression stroke (got it right this time) and beginning of the power stroke and the crank balancer should be at TDC. Now you've got a straight slot on the end of the drive gear which says that you can only put the distributor in one way or the other. You'll also notice on the inner shaft of the dizzy there are 8 tits, if this was a 6 cyl. engine there would be 6 tits, and also inside the dizzy one reluctor pickup. Drop the distributor into the block meshing the slot in the gear with the end of the dizzy shaft. Now turn the dizzy outer housing so that one of the tits is directly over the middle of the reluctor and check your gap then snug down the distributor lock plate to block. Watch that you've got clearance on both sides of the vacuum advance cuss you're going to have to turn the dizzy slightly with the engine running to fine tune the timing. Now lets say that when you drop the dissy into the engine the rotor tip is pointing towards the fire wall, that's fine, that just means that the No.1 plug wire goes to the fire wall side connector on the cap when the cap is snapped down. The rest of the wires are connected to the cap following the engine firing order starting at No.1.
Now lets say that you don't want the rotor tip (for No,1) pointing at the firewall, you want it pointing at the carb instead, for plug wire routing reasons. Fine, remove the dissy from the engine and rotate the dizzy shaft only 180 degrees so that now No.1 is now on the carb side of the distributor and drop it back into the slot and recheck that the tit is still over the center of the reluctor, if not turn the distributor housing till it is.

Terry