Neat trick for reindexing the Distributor.

While buttoning up my engine rebuild this weekend I ran into the same problem others mentioned about the rotor not aligning. Performance cams are often made with a few degrees advance built into them which then throws off the disrtibutor. The gear on the dist has an odd number of teeth (13) so I pulled it off and turned it 180 degrees, reinstalled it and sure enough it lined right up. No more grinding the alignment tabs on the dist housing. The motor fired right up and has about a hundred miles on it now, so far-so good. TC

When I rebuilt my 88 with a new (Isky) cam I indexed the cam with a degree wheel and offset keys as part of the blueprinting. The result was a drop in for the distributor phasing, and it fired right up.

On a good friends 258 HO MPI the distributor rotor is 180 degrees out, with the plug wires corrected to match, because it has always ran better tuned this way (with the Crane xxx901 cam). He opted to have the machine shop assemble his engine, and they set the cam straight up with no degree wheel (just align the keyways and timing marks). The result has passed the CA DMV referee, and two subsequent emissions inspections without fail (actually, extremely clean) so it does not seem to be a problem.

If it works, exploit the result.