Hello all,

The '79 distributor in my '81 (dunno, that's the way it was when I bought the car) was in such a position that I could not rotate it all the way to get proper static timing. The vacuum advance can was hitting the A/T dipstick. So I decided to pull it out and rotate it a tooth or two. After putting it in a better position, I could not make it go down the last quarter inch or so.

So I'm thinking it's not engaging the oil pump drive shaft properly. I pulled the distributor all the way out, expecting to see the shaft clipped to the bottom under the gear (that's the way it is on FE Fords I've built) but it was not there - is the Chevy design for it to stay in the pump?

Anyhow, I tried a number of positions to see if I could get engagement, and I could in a few positions, but the rotor was not pointed anywhere close to where it needed to be. When I put the rotor where it needs to go, it won't go down. Anybody already fought this battle and can give some advice?

One thought I had was, since the distributor is far enough down that the gears mesh, I might rotate the engine, probably by hand, while someone else wiggles and pushes down on the distributor - since the oil pump (and the shaft) is not turning, rotating the engine would align them every 60 degrees. Is this a valid theory? I didn't have anyone else in the shop or I would have tried it.

Any advice would be appreciated - Thanks!

Once you have the body of the dist where you want it you can just manually rotate the engine or just bump the starter, it will fall into place by itself.
The pump driveshaft is held onto the pump via a nylon collar.

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Shine a flashlight down the dist hole and you will see the slot on top of the oil pump shaft. Reach in with a long slotted screwdriver, engage the tip in the slot and turn it a bit, it will drop right in.

Bumping the engine while keeping pressure on the distributor is the easy way to do it, like rust mentioned.

I am surprised more people haven't bought the cheapy priming tool that is sold. It is the simplest way to line up the pump driveshaft. You push it on, turn it a little, try the distributor. I have an old distributor that I use for priming that I ground the gear teeth off of. It works like a champ. Put it in place, rotate it around until it drops into the pump, and put it where you want it. I even marked the top to be indexed so that I know where the pump shaft slot is pointing.

Yeah the rotating the engine theory is what I use now. Always did it 73454's way but when it takes me 3 to 4 hours doing it the rotating an sticking the dist in way. Last two times I had it out I spun the motor over an oh so nice.

If your vaccum pot is hitting the dipstick then you should get number one piston at TDC compression stroke an start from there. It drops twice actually (at least for mine), first drop it must go in cam gear then oil slit. So I spun the oil shaft with a priming shaft until I got the dist to drop down first lvl to point #1 fire on cap towards the #1 cylinder. Then I manually turn the motor over till it drops.

[This message has been edited by Scott_H (edited July 29, 2005).]

Or you could move it back to where it was and just move all the spark plug wires over one position. Quick, easy, and only half 'rigged.

Yeah, I thought of that the next day... But I decided to go forward with getting it to drop in with the rotor in the new position, which worked fine when my son rotated the engine by hand. Thanks for all the replies, guys!

What make's the differance? That little thing in the distributor goes around and "hits all the points in the cap anyway"