Is an HEI a good style dizzy to go with and does it require an ignition control box? Only questions I've got about it the rest I have pretty much figured out. Thanks!
I would like to repost my good experience with the all in one Summit HEI distributor for $140.00. Comes with a 50,000 volt coil. All you have to do is plug one positive wire from the ignition switch into it. You will have to buy GM caps and rotors for it though. If you are converting to any sort of performance carb setup, you are going to have to have some sort of HEI ignition setup. You weren't honestly thinking of putting a points distributor in were you?
Just uploaded this picture for another question in a different thread, so I figured I would post it here. This is the Summit all in one distributor in a 302. They have the same distributor available for a 351. The only electronics you hook up is the positive power source going to the red wire. The white wire can be capped, removed, or used to hook up a tachometer. It doesn't come with a distributor pigtail (the red and wire plug), and the cheapest one I found was $15 at O'Reilly's. I bought a Chevy 2 wire distributor pigtail, cut the tabby off of it, and it was a perfect fit.
I was incorrect, they don't offer it in the Summit brand for a 351W. They do have it in the Proform brand though. It's the exact same setup, with a slightly higher price. No ignition box required. The ignition control is internal. All you do is supply one positive power source to power the distributor. It's set up for vacuum advance. This is essentially a GM all in one distributor from the 80s with a Ford shaft stuffed in the bottom. The ignition control and pickup is located in the lower portion of the distributor and is connected to the distributor cap with that little pigtail. It only plugs in one way. The ignition coil is located on the top of the cap and sends the ignition power directly down to the rotor. The largest advantage to this distributor is that it uses all factory GM tune up and ignition control parts. If you buy a Mallory unilite or something similar, you have to pay Mallory prices for Mallory specific parts that have to be shipped from a performance parts supplier. Not to mention a Mallory equivalent setup is going to be $300+. If anything goes wrong with this distributor, such as an ignition control module failure, you can go down to Advance or Autozone and tell them you need an ignition control module for an 85' Camaro 305.
Yeah, you can hook up the tach easily. There are usually 4 wires coming off the tachometer. Red = positive, black = ground, white = dimmer light, and green = tach signal. First of all the distributor doesn't come with a pigtail, because they are cheap bastards. So you will need to buy a pigtail. As mentioned before, the actual pigtail is too expensive, but you can buy a GM Alternator pigtail, and cut off the tab with a pair of dykes. This is the pigtail I'm talking about.
The red wire on the pigtail goes to the positive ignition source. Basically saying that it just needs to get power when you turn the key on in the car. The white wire is the tach signal, and you just connect that to the green wire on your tachometer. Not sure which wire this is if you want to use the stock tach, but I'm sure there's a way to do it. Hissin would have a much better idea than I would on how to do that. The distributor itself actually grounds through the engine block. That's why there is no ground wire on it. If you choose to put an MSD on the car in the future it wires in on the pigtail that goes between the lower part of the distributor and the distributor cap. The MSD is definately not required though.
Oh and just for reference, there is a price to pay for having this really convenient distributor, and that is that it is enormous. That is a 14" air filter on it, and it is actually almost touching the distributor. I had to run that air filter for again, price issues. That whole filter kit was $27. Just be aware of that when you decide on a filter. Those wires were no picnic either. I had to have straight boot wires for these exhaust manifolds. I couldn't find a precut kit that had long enough wires to go through the really nice factory looms on the center of the valve covers. I ended up having to get a standard Accel wire length kit, and custom cut each one of those wires. Actually got the wife to do it for me, but that's beside the point. If you are using standard style Mustang headers, or long tubes, you should be able to use a factory set of wires though.
ok thanks for the info. I have hooker 351w swap headers on the car so the boots should fit...hopefully anyways.
So that its a 14" round air cleaner? If necessary i can always go taller cause my car has a 3" hood on it and the torker 2 edelbrock intake is pretty low profile.
That's actually an engine for a 71' Ford pickup truck, which of course came with a carb. Ford didn't start using HEI until 1974, and I convinced the owner that rebuilding the factory points system was going to cost more than the HEI, and he would have to adjust and change points frequently. It was just a no brainer to convert it all over to HEI when we swapped the engine.
I first mark the distributer with it out of the car. This is easy to do. I find that the best thing to mark a distributer with is white out. Pretty makes the most visible marks on anything automotive, and it scrapes right off when you don't want it any more. With the distributer assembled, determine what position it would best sit in the car. The vacuum advance faces to the front, and the number one spark plug wire is to the back. It doesn't have to be any particular lead. Choose one lead, and mark it as number one. Go straight down from that lead to where the cap meets the base, and mark it with white out, or a marker, or whatever.
Usually the number one cylinder is towards the intake side of the distributer. Doesn't really matter exactly which lead you plug it into. You want the engine to be set at 10 degrees BDTC for cylinder number one. You can leave the distributer out, to set it there. You are going to have to turn the engine over with a large socket wrench. You put a socket and wrench on the crank pulley, and turn the pulley as if you were tightening it. It will be easier to do if the spark plugs are removed, but not necessary. Remove the number one spark plug, which is the one on the passenger side, towards the front. Stick your left booger picking finger in the spark plug hole, and crank the engine with the socket wrench. When you start to feel a lot of air pass over your booger picking finger, it means the engine is on the compression stroke. Turn the engine around until the timing pointer is at 10 degrees BTDC. The engine is now in position to fire on the number one cylinder. Place the distributer in, so that the ignition rotor is pointing back towards the intake. Keep in mind that rotor is going to twist clockwise as it goes down due to the non straight cut gears. It doesn't have to be in a perfect position. Make sure the base is seated all the way down against the block. If there is a small gap between the block and the distributer, it means that it's disagreeing with the position of your oil pump shaft. Pull the distributer out and either pick another position for it, or reach down there with a tool and turn the oil pump shaft a little. The best tool for this is obviously a priming tool, but you probably don't have one of those, so just use what you have. Never hit it with a hammer or use too much force. If it doesn't seat down, there is something wrong. After you have the distributer all the way down and seated, turn the distributer until the rotor is pointing directly at your white out mark. Lock the distributer down with the distributer lock. Now you can position the distributer cap onto the distributer base. Take the distributer cap and place it on the distributer. Place your ignition wires around the distributer from number one in the correct firing order. There are two firing orders, and I'm not sure which your engine is setup for. Probably the HO firing order. Double check your timing sequence.
Now try and start your engine, with the air filter off. If it starts, then thats good. Set your final timing with a timing light, and the vacuum hose to the vacuum advance disconnected. If it doesn't start, move the distributer a little bit back and forth until it does start. If it shoots a huge f'n flame out of your carbuerator, that means you have something way out of whack, and discontinue cranking as this can damage your carb. Most likely you have a miscalibrated booger picking finger, and you have distributer set to fire on the exhaust stroke instead of the compression stroke.