Hei for the ‘68 Tempest
The ‘68 has been running rough when intermediatly warmed up, it was fine when cold, then it would stall at stop lights, then it would run great again. It didn’t seem to be the carb, so I pulled the distributor cap. It was pretty oily and nasty. I cleaned it up, but it only lasted a few weeks before it started to go down hill. Probably a bad seal letting engine oil get inside. I figured I’d just upgrade to an Hei distributor instead of messing with stock one. So I found one on ebay, new (but probably made in china) for about $80. First I put the timing mark on TDC (checking that the distributor rotor was pointing at the #1 sparkplug wire to make sure I wasn’t 180 out).
Then I removed the cap and wires. I used a distributor wrench to take off the holddown bolt:
I hadn’t done it in the above pic, but I made a smudge on the firewall that showed where the rotor was pointing. When I pulled the distributor up though, because the gear is helical cut, the rotor twisted clockwise, as seen below:
It’s this position that I will line up the rotor on the new distributor, so that when it is lower in, it will twist counter-clockwise and line up with the smudge. And it does:
Sometimes the oilpump shaft will need to be twisted a little, you can do that with a large screwdriver. Now I just need 12V power thats not from a resistor wire (like the old coil was) and some new sparkplug wires to fit the new style cap.
