I found this old auction on Ebay..... is it a legitimately useful item? Has anyone ever seen or used one?


http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...RK%3AMEWA%3AIT


Thanks!

 

I have one on my car that I bought from Ecklers for $39.99 plus tax and shipping charges. I used this to remove the excessive bend in the distributor housing that was causing my tach cable to break.

That was before I learned on the forum that Chevy had issued a bulletin to explain how to remove the tension by moving the spark plug wires over by one position counter clockwise, and then walking the distributor clockwise to that it remove tension on the cable connection by allowing a more straight forward connection, while retaining the correct ignition timing order.

Or you could install this unit for $39.99 plus tax and shipping charges.

kdf

 

If you install the plug wires onto the correct places on the distributor cap you don't need one.

 

CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN.PLEASE. My tach cable has a bend in it and I think it's not working right because of it. 73 350 Mallory unilite dist with tach drive.
Thanks
Rich

 

No matter what you cable is going have some bend to it, the trick it make is a long sweeping curve from where the tach cable exits the fire till it meets up the dist, moving your plug wires allows you to rotate the dist to so the tach output can be moved to reduce to the angle of the bend, you will need to retime your eng after but no biggie

 

The number 1 spark plug wire is supposed to be located in line with the dwell adjustment window in the cap. If your distributor is timed to teh camshaft correctly there will only very gentle bends in the cable. What usually happens is that the distributor is NOT correctly timed to the cam.

To fix the cable issue without removing the distributor, you need to shift all of the plug wires one hole at a time, and retime the distributor until the tach cable runs with ONLY gentle bends. When you are done, your distributor will be pointed slightly rearward from being pointed straight towards the left side of the car.

The trick is shifting the wires in the right direction. Set the engine on the timing mark at the top of the compression stroke. This can be found by removing the #1 plug and seeing that air is being pushed from the plug hole as the timing mark aligns at the 0 on the pointer. Remove the distributor cap and note where the rotor is pointing. Then move the distributor to where the cable runs with only gentle bends. At that point, determine how many terminals the wires need to be shifted. Then ONE at a time move the wires starting with the number one wire to its new position on the cap that makes it line up as close as possible to the rotor. Then move the rest of the wires, again one a time, keeping them in the same order on the cap. The engine should start and can be timed to allow for your hand rotation of the distributor. If the cable still looks like it is bent too much you should only need to go one wire either way to make the cable run nicely at that point.

 

If I knew about this adjustment 1 year ago, I would not have spent my $40 buying this part when I could do the same thing for free. This is the adjustment procedure that Chevrolet recommended in a service bulletin to remove the kink in the tach cable.

kdf