Now that my ’81 Vette is my daily driver I am discovering more items I want to check off the list to make it more comfortable and reliable. Seeing that we had nice weather this weekend in the Austin area I decided to tackle a few projects, the biggest being an ignition upgrade. A little background, the previous owner of my Vette installed an Edelbrock Pro-Flo fuel injection system. Ever since I bought it I would experience random ignitions resulting in popping and chugging of the car. Even after a lengthy session with my friend Manny driving and I working the hand held calibration unit but I could never find them or tune them out completely. As part of the kit Edelbrock has you convert your factory HEI distributor to a hall-effect distributor. The conversion kit is pretty straight forward but many owners on the Edelbrock forums have reported numerous problems with it. Mallory Ignition makes a replacement billet distributor just for the Pro-Flo EFI systems and many users have reported great success with them. However they run about $280 and I had always considered it a last resort. Enter the wonderful world of Amazon and scoring one for $150.00! I knew I would be installing some ceramic coated headers in the future and wanted to re-route and properly loom the plug wires. Seeing that I would have everything apart I figured this was the best time to do it. I also wanted to make a set of custom wires since every set for SBC’s seem to be way too long and just look ridiculous. I used a set of Taylor valve cover vertical mount looms but did not get any clear pictures of them installed.

The parts. Not pictured is the MSD Blaster 2 coil I used and Ford Motorsports coil bracket. The distributor is truly a fine piece. This is the second Mallory distributor I have used and have been very happy with their products.


Everything pulled apart and the coil and distributor mocked up. I got lucky and was able to use an existing hole that supports a large relay on the firewall to hold the coil bracket in place.


Five hours later of making wires, threading them through the looms and firing the car up. It has been at least 13 years since I made a set of custom wires. Even with the ratcheting crimps I did not get good at it until wire 5 or 6. You would think when you spend $60 for a set of wires and have to make them yourself Taylor would throw in a few extra terminals in case you muck one up.


Everything buttoned back up and looking somewhat stock once again.


The end result, amazing! The distributor was definitely the root of all my problems. Once I got the base timing re-established the car ran beautifully. The car runs a hair rich at times. However with a little fine tuning I am sure I should not only get better mileage out of it but also a little more power. I have few small details to wrap up. The coil wire components that came with the Taylor wires was just flat out cheap. The boot kept sliding off the coil and pulling the terminal out. Right now I am using a spare coil wire from another project and ordered some MSD boots and terminals. My next big project will be the header install followed by a true dual exhaust setup.

 

Looks real good, outstanding job... Know what you mean about the crimping... I counted the ends before I started and prayed I didn't screw one up...

Rogman

 

I have the same project coming up on my '73. Except mine is a MSD Distributor and wires. Thanks for the advice about crimping the wire connectors. I'll approach this project with a little more respect.

John

 

Thanks for the compliments guys. One tip on crimping the wires, put the terminal in your locking crimpers by itself first and squeeze until they click for the first locking position. This will "stage" the terminal in the crimper and hold it in place while you push the wire in. Once you have the wire the way you want squeeze all the way down. At first I was messing with trying to hold the terminal on the wire, get it in the crimpers, and make sure the lead stayed where I wanted. There is probably a YouTube video out there that shows how to do this too.

 

This is a great forum where everybody helps each other.

Thanks for the crimping advice.

John

 

Don't waste your time and effort on cheap crimpers. Amazon has seveal to choose from. I got the Pro Crimp for about $42 and they did a great job.

 

Fully agreed, this cannot be stressed enough. The success of making your own wires depends a lot on the tools you have. I picked up my ratcheting crimpers at Harbor Freight for $11 and bought the plug wire jaws off Ebay for $26. I saved a few bucks since the crimpers used to be around $60. As Flyeri pointed out you can get them ready to go for a very reasonable price.