Not sure about the gasket # but it should be pretty easy to find at most parts stores or even a Chevrolet dealer. Looks like the Moroso 26140 shim kit is about the easiest one to locate now. Should be able to get it on Amazon or at Summit.

 

You don't need to remove the hold down clamp and bolt.
See the slot?
Loosen the bolt and slide the clamp back until it clears the housing.

Now, stuff a rag in the dizzy hole so you don't drop anything down it and reinstall the clamp and bolt, loosely, with the dizzy out, and the clamp retracted.
Put it up over the dizzy base once the dizzy is seated in the oil pump slot and tighten.
Doug
Doug

 

Ohhhh I like that. Thanks Doug

 

Very Sorry to be a PITA...........As I follow this thread.....With the timing mark at TDC with the timing tab, are we saying that the distributor rotor will be at approximately 7 o'clock on the compression stroke on a 327/300 block?

My 283 (61) TDC on the compression stroke was nearly pointing at the #1 cylinder (5 o'clock). Was that correct?

Thanks all!

 

Look at post 12 & 13. The window needs to be indexed @ 6 oclock facing from the front of car. #1 is the tower on the left of window.

 

I removed the roll pin and drive gear. Attempting to slide the main shaft from the housing. I lightly dresses the terminal end of the shaft at the flat areas that fit into the oil pump shaft. I can withdraw the main shaft about 1 inch then she tightens up on me. All I have is PB Blaster at the moment. OK to spray it through the openings in the housing as well as the housing bottom end and work the shaft to try to free it?

 

Thank you! I saw those posts....

 

The flats that engage the oil pump often gain a sharp edge. A flat bastard file or emery cloth will dress the worn edge enough to allow you to remove the main shaft with a clockwise spiral twist. The spiral twist prevents localized scoring damage on the lower shaft bushing and any resulting spiral bushing groove can help oiling after reassembly. You also need to take care to clean the tach gear cavity before pulling out the main shaft, as debris collected by gear wear can get trapped and score the upper shaft bushing.

With the shaft out it should roll straight and clean on a piece of glass or polished granite (with the football hanging over the edge).

Here is a photo of a new shaft above a severely worn old shaft (for reference of where to look for wear):

 

I did dress that area with a flat, fine Swiss file. I'll work her a bit more and try the clockwise twist as you suggest. Will clean out the tach well prior to this. The ware pictures will no doubt help. Thanks.
Paul

 

Here is how you position the rotor and helical drive gear, the only right way:

"Look at the gear and you will see that the hole for the roll pin aligns with a tooth on one side but points between two teeth on the other side. Because there are an uneven number of teeth.

The rotor should point to the position on the gear that the roll pin is between two teeth. I always use this method as it's possible that the dimple on the gear is drilled on the wrong side."

Per our erudite forum member Critter1...

 

Now I gotta go back to the shop and look at that. I'll report back Frank.

 

My shaft is too tight at the oil pump drive to remove without getting rough with it and some dressing of the edges of the flats didn't help. Since my shaft and bushings are in very good shape I chose not to twist it on through the bushing for fear of lightly reaming it. Mine is a TI dist but I can pretty much attend to everything with the shaft still in the housing but the gear removed so it can slide up and down in the housing an inch or so. I've had mine apart about 3 or 4 times in the last month custom fitting a bushing to limit total mechanical advance.

 

Trying to clock the distributor by following by piecemeal instructions is asking for mistakes and teaches you nothing. If you need to maintain your own ignition you need to learn how it works and the fundamentals of the early ignitions are not that difficult. I say this because there is an amount of "phasing" built into each distributor to allow for advance as the rotor approaches the terminal. Who know who has how much phasing built in?
So you need to understand that if the dampner mark has been verified to #1 TDC when it points to zero on the timing tab the #1 cylinder and #6 cylinder are both at TDC. And I explained previously how to see which is ready to fire by looking at the valves. But you need to understand that as the crank moves 90* the next set of pistons in the firing order come to TDC (cyl #8 and Cyl #5). But the distributor only moves 45* to the next terminal on the cap. Why/ Because the the crankshaft turns twice for every single rotation of the cam and distributor. So the rotor only turns 45* to reach the next terminal and you should realize by looking at the cap it will take the crankshaft 2 turns for the distributor rotor to turn only once. And as Frankie labeled the cap for you you can see which cylinders come to TDC together as they oppose each other on opposite sides of the cap. Really pretty simple once you sort it out.
But the issue is not just pointing to the correct terminal at TDC for that cylinder but how much initial advance you need which may not be reflected by where the rotor points. Because of phasing remember? So what I'm really saying is once the distributor is in and clocked where you want it you still have to find the initial advance you want to use or as some owners call the sweet spot for idle and they use just the engine sound to set their initial advance. Not saying which is best just you need to understand how it works and chose the method you like for yourself. But monkey see monkey do methods are really just going to make more problems for you as try to set your engine idle the way you like it. You may have to clock the distributor more than once, maybe more than 3 times. Who cares how may tries but you will find out what you can do with that advance can in the way and what you can't. Someone else's opinion is just that!

 

I understand that the crank rotates twice for every rotation of the distributor.

I used a piston stop to calculate TDC and its relation to the balancer/pointer when the rotor was pointing to what I thought at the time was #1, now turns out that it was #2 on the cap and that the dizzy is off a tooth or so. She ran fine by the way and with an initial of 16* BTDC after I had previously remapped the WOT advance curve. I still had about 3/16" clockwise rotation available before the VAC would contact the coil.

No, I did not pull the valve cover to study the valves. My reasoning was that if she was set up with an initial of 16* and if it was #6 piston actually in compression not #1, I would think she would run horribly if at all. The spark plugs would be firing on cylinders that are on their exhaust stroke. Other than the erratic idle, she ran nice and smooth through 5K rpm while driving so I would think that when the rotor points to a cap tower, it's corresponding cylinder is in compression. If I am wrong on this point please correct me.

My initial plan was to reinstall the dizzy in the same place using the rotor tip and dizzy body index marks I made after having rotated the crank to 8* (it was suggested) and viewing the rotor position. If I get it back in and all the index marks are aligned she should run. The assumption is that once rebuilt with all the excess end play shimmed out of her and reinstalled the way she was, she would again run fine, only with a better idle I would hope. Duke, and I assume others, feel the dizzy positional error should be corrected.

The car has been on my 4 post lift and has not moved so no movement of the crank since I started. So the balancer is still pointed at 8* BTDC. Nothing has moved. If I walk the dizzy clockwise so that is seats all the way with the pointer at the correct #1 cap tower and I rotate the housing back to my index line, the dizzy will be set up with an 8* initial timing and indexed properly to the cam with the rotor pointing the the correct #1. Obliviously I will reposition the spark plug wires before starting her.

If I am still missing a point here please do have patience and explain it to me, the simpler the better. That said I think my reasoning is correct here.

 

Sorry Dude but my post was a reply to another poster that seemed confused or at unaware enough to be vulnerable to mistakes. You mistook it as for you but I feel you have a handle on what your trying to do and thanks for posting your progress as I can see it's hitting home with others on the forum.

 

Forget the index line. It's based on an improper distributor installation due to improperly indexed wires.

With the balancer notch on 8-10 BTC compression stroke #1, once the dist. base is seated rotate the dist CW to the limit then rotate CCW until the points JUST BEGIN to open. If you use an ohmmeter you will be within a degree of where the balancer notch is set, and if you just eyeball it you will be within a couple of degrees. The above is called static timing the engine. The VAC should end up about midway between the interference points, and the window near normal it engine CL. If not, you're off a tooth.

It might take a little experience, but with a little practice you will be an expert, like I became over 50 years ago when I had to learn on my own "the dimple deal" and how to properly remove and install a distributor and static time the engine. All the so-called "experts" I talked to back then as a 19-year old kid trying figure this out were clueless... I mean TOTALLY, UTTERLY CLUELESS!!! And that was the last time I ever talked to them about anything car related.

Other than having to tweak the oil pump drive shaft sometimes, it drops right in and the engine starts... every time.

Follow my instructions precisely from my earlier post and you will be successful, including the initial rotor tip position as you start to drop the distributor in.

Duke

 

The only wrinkle here Duke is that I have an SE ignition, no points. Now I guess it works basically the same only with a magnet and a vane. Ill have to look into that.
Just finished disassembling everything and not much to report.

Upper and lower bushings look good, No visible scoring in them.
The mechanical advance bushing is still in place.
The felt washer and spring clip could be replaced and the grease within the well looked like the saw dust-oil mixture I have read about.
The VAC is a new B-26 unit so it's fine.
The breaker plate ground wire looks fine, still (soldered?) to the underside of the plate. The wire itself flexes easily, probably was replaced when the PO installed the SE ignition.
Tach cross shaft gear looks fine as does the mating teeth on the main shaft
The only question is the condition of the main shaft. It did not want to come out yesterday. As per advice I did clean a load of crap out of the housing where the cross shaft lives and then soaked it overnight in Blaster. Came right out today. The shaft is chrome but there are obvious areas of surface corrosion. Not pitted, just surface stuff. There are what looks like circumferential scratches at the usual spots where she spins in the bushings but when one runs a finger over them, your hard pressed to feel much. As advised I rolled the shaft on a flat steel surface and it rolls effortlessly and I can not appreciate any gaps so it appears to be straight and true.

So do I just polish up the surface corrosion with fine emery cloth, leave it as is or buy a new shaft?

 

Cardo O, yeh I realized we had two conversations running on one thread. No worries on my end and thanks for clearing up the confusion.

 

You can polish the shaft and work on getting the corrosion off - just don't get too carried away in the areas the bushings ride so as not to undersize the shaft further than past wear has. The corrosion should be in areas that aren't supported by the bushings.

Since you have it all apart you might looks at the bushing on the advance stop pin and see if a larger one could be installed that would clear the slot. That would decrease total centrifugal advance and allow you to increase your base timing a little which is usually a good idea for performance and driving ease. I've done this on several distributors - Mopar and recently my Vette. I've tried lots of times to mic the length of the slot, mic the diameter of the existing bushing, subtract it from the slot length. Divide that by the total number of degrees of centrifugal advance it currently is running, to come up with a measurement in thousands per degree of crank advance. And then figure how many thousands bigger bushing I need to limit the mech advance to what I want to change the total mechanical advance to. It never works out.

Instead playing with advance bushing size is strictly a trial and error process. I did find that MSD bushings will work on a Delco distributor, although most of them are too big to fit in the slot without flattening the sides to narrow it, or filing the width of the slot wider. And you can't go by the MSD literature as the MSD advance plate apparently has different geometry for the advance stop and slot. I found the next from smallest "sliver" MSD bushing worked best in my TI distributor and only took a very small amount of flattening of the sides to fit in the slot. But I ended up with 18 crank degrees mechanical advance when I was looking for 20. The next smaller bushing was barely larger than the one I put on the stop pin years ago that gave me 24 crank degrees advance so I stayed with the silver one and set 18 degrees base timing. If interested in doing this you might find a kit somewhere with various size bushings specific to Delco distributors but I haven't seen one.

May be useless information if you plan to stick with stock GM settings but since you are this far in I thought I would mention it.

 

I'll go ahead and polish the areas in question as you suggest. Keep in mind that before I started down this road my total knowledge of timing was pretty basic, plug the VAC, set the idle and crank in the initial value mentioned in the book. Since that time I have read about initial timing, mechanical timing and the 30* that provides, total timing, why this is all necessary burn rate wise, VAC and what that brings to the table, checking the accuracy of the TDC pointer to the balancer mark (mine was off 20* because the balancer was in the process of failing), how to replace a balancer, experimenting with springs to get the total advance all in earlier and now tearing down the dizzy for R&R. Oh also that it was indexed wrong to the cam resulting in the unorthodox spark plug wire positioning on the cap. It's a great example of why I have embraced this hobby, not to leave out the support of a boat load of people, way more experienced than me, patient enough to hold my proverbial hand.

All that said I need to draw a line somewhere. Refreshing the dizzy I have and shimming out the excessive end play, reinstalling it correctly, getting 36*-38* all in at 2,600-3,000, and a better idle quality (end play correction I'm hoping) should be good enough. Trial and error is one thing when experimenting with springs, and another if I have to remove and reinstall the distributor over and over. If I can accomplish the above stated goals and get it back in and she starts, I'll feel like a junior wrench turner.

Thanks.