Hot Rods SBC Distributor and the "One tooth off" myth???

If its in just take the cap off and #1 plug out. Have someone crank it while you are holding your finger over the plug hole. Watch the position of the rotor as the compression blows your finger off of the hole. Use the cap terminal at that position as #1. I always put the rotor back where it's supposed to be myself...

 

Yep,,Doing it that way since I was a kid

 

some very good tips. thanks

 

I've had to grind the little sliding window area on a points distributor to gain more room to set the timing on dual quad intakes.

 

^^^ this works but the absolute small block trick is to get your distributer to drop until it won't then bump the motor over, it won't change teeth it just turns until the oil pump drive lines up and falls into place.

For me it has always been a matter of which is easiest at the time, *if my engine is stabbed way too deep for the screw driver to be easy to fool with I just use the screw driver to jump the starter.

*look for an example later this week when I update the Southern Employment Special. LOL

 

waaaay back in tech school we were made to pull the dist. for any job related to it[points,condenser,etc] and put it in the distributor machine.While we would be doing that the instructor would reach in and crank the starter!You got good at finding TDC and installing the dist. in a hurry.

 

Maybe I'm missing something what can hitting the key hurt it's not like it's going to try to start.

 

Installing a distributor on a "disturbed" engine means any match, marks etc are useless. You have to got thru a few tests using "first principles" to figure out the correct distributor location.

 

Most likely nothing,
However the starter motor is going to put more power, more torque, & more speed - if something was to go wrong the damage could be a lot worse. with the bar if something were to go wrong there would be no damage.

 

always liked to "clock" my vertex mags with the plug wires coming out the back,that way the wires ran along the motor plate and under the headers.The "one tooth off crew"would always tell me that it wouldn't work!lol

 

The one tooth off faction would be in a lot of trouble if you told them to pee in the corner in a round room.

I can see one tooth being a problem if you don't end up with enough swing to time it. other then that its a circle and it turns back and forth.

 

i guess the highlander has never seen "my cousin vinny"

 

thanx 33

 

your welcome.
that scene is pure porno for me...........video viagra.

 

Hang in there. This repair sounds like most of my repairs on my '57. That's why I have named her "Hell Bitch." I love her and she hates me!

 

Sounds like you and I had the same auto tech instructor. While you were at the distributor machine he'd call your name across the shop. When you'd turn around you'd see him leaning thru the window of your car giving the key a twist and spinning the engine over. The worst part was he would laugh as he scampered away. So you'd think you were being smart the next time by making sure to remove your keys from the ignition the next time you had the distributor out. But when he'd call your name and you turned around, he was leaning over your fender jumping the solenoid with a screwdriver!

 

I learned to install and time distributors correctly 40 years ago from an excellent high school auto shop teacher, he said " if you guys can learn this you will amaze your friends". Thanks Mr. Kohl, you were correct. In tech school we were graded on how close we got the distributor dead timed to what base timing spec was on multiple test stand engines. If the base timing called for 10 degrees you had to be at 10 degrees to get the top score.

 

My auto instructor added a time factor. Pull the distributor, crank the engine, reinstall and check timing. 10 minutes, in a car. You couldn't go to the next lesson until you could do it.
I did the same as an auto instructor, too.

 

left team drops the dist at 14:00 and stabs it 3/4/5 times...
camera pans off...you can hear him bump the starter...
the other team drops it in ONCE at 15:59 AND uses the starter to seat/it all the way in...
but hay the other team won.... its a toss up on how you do the things you know
E N J O Y the vid...

now if your assembling an engine on a engine stand the *screwdriver turn the oil pump*
works so BOTH is the way to do it.





note the team that WON turned the dist back and forth to start
team 2 did not turn the dist it started right off...?

 

71 270 HP 350, 8 BTDC
73 175 HP 350, 12 BTDC

Mona Lisa Vito, TDC or " straight up" in a manner of speaking...

 

Be sure to get your info from movies I'm sure Chevy is glad to know that all those 250 and 300 hp Bel-airs only had 2 barrels. As for the swing axle Tempest keeping the tires flat on the pavement not the ones I was around.

 

LOL I wasn't allowed to take auto shop and I had the grades that the school required. You had to have parents with pull to get into auto shop. I did get called one day out of calculus class to stab the dizzy in a screamin' small block though. The teacher had tried for over an hour and couldn't get it to run and the kid who owned it told him that I could make it fire. LOL To this day I wish I had that kid's daddy's check book to build a motor. Damn that was a sweet motor.

 

I never trust initial timing, always do running full advance on damper with corrected timing marks.

 

Third time, remove the battery and take it with you.

 

ah he'd just put a breaker bar or big rachet on the crank snout.

 

I always put number 1 cylinder at 1:00 as viewed from the front of the engine. Why? Because I'm an asshole, and it confuses most people. Neither the distributor nor the motor know the difference. If you understand it, it's easy. If you don't it can screw up your whole day.

 

I would take Mona Lisa Vito @ TDC, straight up, 4 degrees before,or 180 out

 

proper torque is important. it needs to be twisted just right.