Distributor wiring
Thread Starter
Racer
Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 361
Likes: 0
From: Sacramento (Citrus Heights) California
Distributor wiring
Did a search but didn't find anything particularly useful.
I have an Accel HEI distributor mounted on my smallblock and in order to stop the engine (it was running-on/dieseling) I pulled the power supply wire off of the distributor. So I go to put it back in today, and the spade connector that Bubba had put on there was still in the distributor and the wire is actually 2 wires, one black and one red/pink with a cloth cover. Which one do I plug in?
TIA
I have an Accel HEI distributor mounted on my smallblock and in order to stop the engine (it was running-on/dieseling) I pulled the power supply wire off of the distributor. So I go to put it back in today, and the spade connector that Bubba had put on there was still in the distributor and the wire is actually 2 wires, one black and one red/pink with a cloth cover. Which one do I plug in?
TIA
Tech Contributor
Joined: Aug 1999
Posts: 14,380
Likes: 6,390
From: At my Bar drinking and wrenching in Lafayette Colorado
Sounds like your car is a pre-75 car that originally had a points-type distributor in it. The person doing the HEI conversion simply took the original coil wires (there are 2 of them) and hooked them to the HEI. This is not a good setup, since the stock wire has a resistor wire in it to drop the voltage down for the old points. You need to run a new heavy-gage wire from your fuseblock "IGN" source to the HEI distributor.
Thread Starter
Racer
Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 361
Likes: 0
From: Sacramento (Citrus Heights) California
Sounds like your car is a pre-75 car that originally had a points-type distributor in it. The person doing the HEI conversion simply took the original coil wires (there are 2 of them) and hooked them to the HEI. This is not a good setup, since the stock wire has a resistor wire in it to drop the voltage down for the old points. You need to run a new heavy-gage wire from your fuseblock "IGN" source to the HEI distributor.
Tech Contributor
Joined: Aug 1999
Posts: 14,380
Likes: 6,390
From: At my Bar drinking and wrenching in Lafayette Colorado
Yes - HEI just takes a single hot (ignition switched) wire to the "BATT" terminal. This wire should not be a resistor wire (stock points type setup) or run through a ballast resistor.
