was wondering if anyone has experience with an HEI distributor (big base) and different carb intake manifolds as far as clearance goes. especially high rise single planes.
71 gold went through a very similar question a couple weeks ago, some of the posts got so bad that he ended up deleting and restarting the thread several times within a 2 or 3 day period. I will say this most of the HEI distributors you get for a ford, amc, dodge ect are made in china and imported by Procomp electric in california. Now besides the made in china standpoint, most of them have a very low Quality controll process and there are many many many horror stories all over because of the high associated failure rates they have. Had a buddy put one on a 84 CJ last year, ended up coming apart because their tolerencing sucks and the inner shaft galded too the housing overheated and twisted the top right off, yes it was a really big mess. There are instances where companies buy them(hint DUI) and tear them apart and dump all the metal shavings out that got left in when they machined and assembled the unit in china. The only thing that the HEI gives you over a duraspark box is simplicity...You can say hotter spark but that is just a matter of changing coils. Sad to say most of the guys that use them have to run an offset air cleaner or else a smaller air cleaner. Ironically they wont work with the Parker funnel web manifolds(now made by procomp) and some of the other high rise intakes come in contact with them. Some people are unable to run their AC units with them, some people are. So if you want to go cheap and get one good luck hopefully they work, it seems like its about a 50-50 shot and if you buy one from ebay you might not have a warrenty
I'm running an ebay special. your right made in china. Also I'm running a summit brand intake similar design to an edelbrock performer and there is a clearance issue with it. right out of the box had to chang the ignition module. so mines be "upgraded" if you will with all new gm parts, but still have the housing. seems to work ok, but if your going for longgevity/performance may just want to get a billet dizzy and be done. as for me, I'll run mine till she craps out, just a street car anyways!
