Distributor position

[UKCobra]

Hi. The distributor on my totally stock 1966 427 seems to be in the wrong position. The vacuum advance is at 5 o'clock when looking front to back. I'm a bit of a newbie with these engines, but shouldn't it be closer to the 7 o'clock position? The engine runs fine, so should I just forget about it, or try to rotate it? I'm guessing that it's one or two teeth out on the gear. If I do try to fix it, do I have to worry about the oil pump shaft? The engine is in the car, with no plans to remove it, so the last thing I want to happen is for the shaft to drop out. Thanks for any advice.

[ZOERA-SC7XX]

If your timing is correct, then leave it alone. The position of the vac pod doesn't matter as long as you can adjust your timing.

[wtm442]

As long as the vacuum advance unit is not hitting anything and you can rotate the dizzy to time it, I would leave it alone.

Does the #1 spark plug wire attach to the terminal #1 on the dizzy cap? Usually, the #1 position on the cap is identified somehow.

[flipscobra]

anytime you pull a distributor out of an FE you have to be very carefull, because if it does not have the star washer on the shaft when the motor was built, it can fall out. If it goes into the oilpan you can get it out thru the drain plug.

[convincor]

"by the book" number one on the cap would be the terminal just to the right side of the rear cap clip when veiwed from the front of the car.
I've found that with #1 at TDC the rotor should be pointing toward cylinder #8, and the cap clip aligned with the rotor gives you just about 10° of timing. I use this for initial start ups and alway's works perfect..
As for yours, as the old saying goes, "leave well enough alone"..

[Michael C Henry]

I have a Mallory distributor with mechanical tach drive so there is verry little allowable travel in the distributor housing location. But I have once sheared the gear drive pin and managed to get the gear 180°, out do the math there are 8 plug locations = 45° and as I remember it there are 15 teeth on the cam = 24° all doubled for crank timing. I ended up chosing another terminal location in the cap and resetting the gear to cam to get the desired initial timing.