I removed my old dist. in order to put a rebuilt unit in. I have tried everything to get the new one to seat in the block. I have put #1 cyl on tdc, wiggled, stabbed, oiled, and turned the shaft to align the oil pump shaft, and the camshaft gear. When these are aligned the case will go a short way down into the block, but not all the way down. I have installed many other distributors without this problem. My question is: are there crankshaft gears that have different pitches on the gears??
I couldn't stab my new Dura Spark either. Looking at the end of the shaft I noticed the inside of new shaft wasn't beveled like the old shaft to "help" align the oil pump drive. I didn't remove the oil pump to confirm my theory.
I will check this tomorrow. I used the old unit for a core, so can't compare the two. I thought that the new unit being a Motorcraft; would be OK, but it has me fooled.
Notice the taper inside the shaft for the oil pump drive. The old factory distributor shaft on the left has more of a slope. I’m thinking with the new chain store rebuilt distributor the hex drive hits the shaft walls and doesn’t want to slide into the distributor as easy as it would if the hole was tapered more of an angle like on the old shaft. This is the only difference I can see after measuring everything else with a micrometer. Only way to be sure would be to remove the Hex drive out of the equation to see if the distributor will fall the rest of the way in. Might be able to wiggle the Hex drive instead of removing...but that means the oil pan would have to be dropped either way just to find out if this is the problem.
If you can, get an oil pump drive shaft and try it in your distributor to ensure it fits properly. I also have had to just " bump " the engine over while holding the distributor in the block. This may result in your timing being incorrect so you may have to give it a couple of tries! I got mine to seat properly doing this. It will just fall into place!
No Frank I have not. Jeff's pictures helped a lot, and that is what I found on mine. I have an original 200cid dist. that slips in perfectly. Thinking of using it with a Pertronics igniter. Whatcha think?
You can just use a nut driver to turn the oil pump shaft a little at a time until it drops in. Don't recall the size exactly. Or put it a tooth or two off like cody 674 said. Doesn't really matter where it's clocked as long as the rotor is pointing at #1 on the cap with the motor at TDC.
After further research I found out that Cardone is the only remanufacturing company for these distributors. I talked to a tech support guy at the company, and he said sometimes in the reman process additional metal is picked up on the shaft housing, and I would have to emory cloth it off. That is not letting the distributor housing slide into the block. I guess that I will try that, and see what happens.
