It’s really funny that you just posted this video. I just picked up an 87 Camaro the other day and it has a bad pickup coil. It actually ended up being a similar price to buy and entire distributor than replace the coil. Great demo and video!
I know enough to be dangerous. I was the kid growing up that was good with tools. Adults went out of their way to keep their children away from me.LOL Thanks for stopping by!
In current vintage car magazines there are sellers of these kind of parts, all new and made here in the USA. Original Parts Group Inc. comes to mind as a seller. The blue distributor cover , distr. gear and ECM are parts can be had but otherwise you may have to buy the whole distributor and shaft. It will run so much better with new parts.
Your point is a good one! For example, The 6 cylinder HEI I showed I rebuilt using all GM parts I ordered from the local Chevy dealer. The price was $42.00 for it on ebay, and $105.00 for the NOS parts for a total of $147.00 in 1998. Now this stuff is all over the place, and very inexpensive. A V-8 HEI for a Chevy can be bought as a re-man for 70 bucks!
Cool tutorial. That design had a flaw in that the cap had ground points all over the place that could be a place for the HEI high voltage to arc over, especially if you had a bad plug wire, the voltage had no where to go but to create a carbon arc to one of the screw areas that secured the coil to the cap. Carburetor engines back then also had floats that would "get heavy" and cause oil dilution. The vapors of fuel would find the way into the distributor cap causing some real havoc with carbon tracking.
You are very well schooled in the "perils" of older vehicles. I'll share 2 things with you - My father was a diesel truck mechanic and had knowledge of all these perils. He showed me the problems with the delco-packard plug wires by simply running the car in the dark, and check for arcing against anything that could be ground! My "Radio Flyer" Buick Sportwagon had a weird problem - It would stall on hard braking or a hard left hand turn. The Carter AFB carb on my 340 has 2 floats, one on either side of the front of the carb. The driver side float took on fuel messing up the fuel reservoir. Don't need a computer to figure these things out! Thanks for stopping by!
The HEI was sort of the middle man for the old points tech and the computerized systems we have in today's wonderful cars. ( btw that is what's called sarcasm with the wonderful cars ☺) Good vid Bob.
I see this is an older video. Ive cut the heads off of several of these to mount on old equipment to get rid of the crazy International Harvester wiring. I would use the lower part of the original distributor drive , and machine the HEI to the lower drive part. Hope that made sense. . I now have an M Farmall tractor. It doesn't have enough room to fit the big HEI distributor head on it. Is there a way to get around the pickup coil to get the HEI module to work??? Before you could simply buy these HEI distributors for Ford engines , it was common practice for circle trackers to do this cut , and machining practice. I know several people who are really down on the Petronix , and other electronic swaps lately. Ive used those as well years ago , and they never gave any trouble. But evidently quality has left , and they burn up quickly now. Just saying I'd much rather use the proven GM HEI components over the electronic swaps , that have short lifespan now.
Funny you mention International.... My Father worked at a IH dealer as a mechanic, and I can remember as a kid seeing Scouts and Travelalls in the driveway and yard. I'm not a pertronix fan either - I've known folks who used them that failed. Even comedian Jeff Dunham took Jay Leno for a ride in one of his Gremlins with a pertronix that failed so Jay just called his shop and had the Gremlin brought to his shop where a points set was installled. I just love the performance and reliability of these distys. I even put one in my 66 Chevelle 230 cubed six car! Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Bob, this question actually has to do with the BC80 repair you did a while back. I’m in the disassembly process and have freed the top electronics from everything but the coiled antenna. There are three wires coming off-center from the antenna through the bottom of the electronics unit. How did you disconnect these to free the unit on top? Thanks! Great videos, this is my first restoration.
Hey Bob, What happens if you install the cam gear on the end of the shaft 180 degrees off from the original position? Will the car not start? I am working with a L98 tuned port injection, and that's one thing I did not mark before I removed it.
If you go to top dead center on the crank, check #1 plug wire and see where the rotor should be there. If it isn't the odds are 50-50 that it's 180 degrees off.
Damnskippy of a nice video bob.I plan on testing one of my hei distributor I took out of my 1980 oldsmobile, it got me stranded last week.Changed to new coil and new control module but no spark to spark plugs Swapped the new coil and new module to a different hei distributor base ,started to get spark but it was intermittent to the spark plugs .Finally my friend threw an hei distributor he had kept in his trunk car started right up ..So what are the signs of a bad magnetic pickup coil?
When the pickup coil goes bad, there's no way it can inductively pickup the spark from the star spinning form the camshaft. Electrically, it would measure open using an ohmeter.
As you know, the 300's and 340 cubed Buicks have the disty up front which causes fit issues (the size of the cap is too big). I found that out the hard way - hey, I tried anyway. I may go with a "Small cap" HEI disty and a heftier coil over the winter.
I put it on Ebay because I bought a 65 El Camino. The new owner was a Brit who lived in Germany. He flew to NYC, stayed with a friend, then took the train to my home to see the car. I let him drive it, and he was hooked. He sent a picture of the car in front of the Brandenburg Gate with the large euro license plate on the front. I think he still owns it.
Hey Bob, great video. Love the HEI's too. Had quite a few of them in the past.
They're reliable and make a nice strong spark! What more could you ask?
I love the spark noise ☺️
It’s really funny that you just posted this video. I just picked up an 87 Camaro the other day and it has a bad pickup coil. It actually ended up being a similar price to buy and entire distributor than replace the coil. Great demo and video!
I know enough to be dangerous. I was the kid growing up that was good with tools. Adults went out of their way to keep their children away from me.LOL Thanks for stopping by!
Good tips if I ever get a vintage car I'll remember this I remember the Sunoco stations all but gone here.
I see them in many street rods! There's still some Sunoco's here left in "Joisey"
In current vintage car magazines there are sellers of these kind of parts, all new and made here in the USA.
Original Parts Group Inc. comes to mind as a seller. The blue distributor cover , distr. gear and ECM are parts can be had
but otherwise you may have to buy the whole distributor and shaft. It will run so much better with new parts.
Your point is a good one! For example, The 6 cylinder HEI I showed I rebuilt using all GM parts I ordered from the local Chevy dealer. The price was $42.00 for it on ebay, and $105.00 for the NOS parts for a total of $147.00 in 1998. Now this stuff is all over the place, and very inexpensive. A V-8 HEI for a Chevy can be bought as a re-man for 70 bucks!
Cool tutorial. That design had a flaw in that the cap had ground points all over the place that could be a place for the HEI high voltage to arc over, especially if you had a bad plug wire, the voltage had no where to go but to create a carbon arc to one of the screw areas that secured the coil to the cap. Carburetor engines back then also had floats that would "get heavy" and cause oil dilution. The vapors of fuel would find the way into the distributor cap causing some real havoc with carbon tracking.
You are very well schooled in the "perils" of older vehicles. I'll share 2 things with you - My father was a diesel truck mechanic and had knowledge of all these perils. He showed me the problems with the delco-packard plug wires by simply running the car in the dark, and check for arcing against anything that could be ground! My "Radio Flyer" Buick Sportwagon had a weird problem - It would stall on hard braking or a hard left hand turn. The Carter AFB carb on my 340 has 2 floats, one on either side of the front of the carb. The driver side float took on fuel messing up the fuel reservoir. Don't need a computer to figure these things out! Thanks for stopping by!
The HEI was sort of the middle man for the old points tech and the computerized systems we have in today's wonderful cars.
( btw that is what's called sarcasm with the wonderful cars ☺)
Good vid Bob.
It's certainly a "tweener"
Great info Bob, Thanks for the video.
Thanks Bill! Looked like You and Tommy had a great time at the fair.
@@Radiowild Yes we did Bob, Thanks
I see this is an older video. Ive cut the heads off of several of these to mount on old equipment to get rid of the crazy International Harvester wiring. I would use the lower part of the original distributor drive , and machine the HEI to the lower drive part. Hope that made sense. . I now have an M Farmall tractor. It doesn't have enough room to fit the big HEI distributor head on it. Is there a way to get around the pickup coil to get the HEI module to work??? Before you could simply buy these HEI distributors for Ford engines , it was common practice for circle trackers to do this cut , and machining practice. I know several people who are really down on the Petronix , and other electronic swaps lately. Ive used those as well years ago , and they never gave any trouble. But evidently quality has left , and they burn up quickly now.
Just saying I'd much rather use the proven GM HEI components over the electronic swaps , that have short lifespan now.
Funny you mention International.... My Father worked at a IH dealer as a mechanic, and I can remember as a kid seeing Scouts and Travelalls in the driveway and yard. I'm not a pertronix fan either - I've known folks who used them that failed. Even comedian Jeff Dunham took Jay Leno for a ride in one of his Gremlins with a pertronix that failed so Jay just called his shop and had the Gremlin brought to his shop where a points set was installled. I just love the performance and reliability of these distys. I even put one in my 66 Chevelle 230 cubed six car! Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Bob, this question actually has to do with the BC80 repair you did a while back. I’m in the disassembly process and have freed the top electronics from everything but the coiled antenna. There are three wires coming off-center from the antenna through the bottom of the electronics unit. How did you disconnect these to free the unit on top? Thanks! Great videos, this is my first restoration.
Hey Bob, What happens if you install the cam gear on the end of the shaft 180 degrees off from the original position? Will the car not start? I am working with a L98 tuned port injection, and that's one thing I did not mark before I removed it.
If you go to top dead center on the crank, check #1 plug wire and see where the rotor should be there. If it isn't the odds are 50-50 that it's 180 degrees off.
Cool
Damnskippy of a nice video bob.I plan on testing one of my hei distributor I took out of my 1980 oldsmobile, it got me stranded last week.Changed to new coil and new control module but no spark to spark plugs Swapped the new coil and new module to a different hei distributor base ,started to get spark but it was intermittent to the spark plugs .Finally my friend threw an hei distributor he had kept in his trunk car started right up ..So what are the signs of a bad magnetic pickup coil?
When the pickup coil goes bad, there's no way it can inductively pickup the spark from the star spinning form the camshaft. Electrically, it would measure open using an ohmeter.
Hi Bob, great stuff, especially for a novice like me. Now the big question - are you gonna put an HEI distributor in The Radio Flyer?
As you know, the 300's and 340 cubed Buicks have the disty up front which causes fit issues (the size of the cap is too big). I found that out the hard way - hey, I tried anyway. I may go with a "Small cap" HEI disty and a heftier coil over the winter.
Hey what happened to the chevelle?
I put it on Ebay because I bought a 65 El Camino. The new owner was a Brit who lived in Germany. He flew to NYC, stayed with a friend, then took the train to my home to see the car. I let him drive it, and he was hooked. He sent a picture of the car in front of the Brandenburg Gate with the large euro license plate on the front. I think he still owns it.