L Head Hei

I bought a summit racing sbc hei for $99. I figured “what the heck, this will be a fun experiment.” To my surprise, the shafts between the stock distributor and the sbc hei were the same diameter. I completely disassembled the hei and put the hosing on the lathe and started whittling away. Now it has the same dimensions as the stock distributor.



It fits into the oil pump perfectly too.



Now the only thing I’m stumped on is, converting it from an 8 cyl to a 4. I’m thinking I just remove every other point on these two stars for the magnetic pickup?

 

I dunno, but I'm going to watch and see what you find out.

 

That’s what I’d do. I have a Pontiac distributor set aside for this.

 

I'm thinking you may want to try it as is. As is, it may function in a similar manner as a wasted spark ignition.

 

I would look at 4-cylinder or even 6-cylinder HEI distributors to see what GM does. The principle is variable reluctance, where the field is disturbed by the changing magnetic permeability of the iron core, when the pointed core pieces are close and far.



This is from a 1980 Chevette - sure looks like the HEI pickup coil. I expect you need four points on the reluctor (shaft mounted) as well.

 

You have my undivided attention.

 

Getting my popcorn . . .

 

I got the HEI installed and all hooked up. Ted fired right up and ran really well until I tried to rev him up. The mechanical advance doesn’t work. Upon further investigation, sbc distributors rotate the opposite way.

 

That's why I have a Pontiac distributor.

 

That was worth every penny. since none were mine!
Got a plan to flip something over?

 

Waiting for the other captain....

 

Do inline Chevy distributors rotate the same as a v8?

 

You might be able to flip the cam and weights over. Of course, the vacuum advance will be pulling the wrong way too. Might need to weld the Chevy shaft to the bottom of a Pontiac HEI.

 

I have a pontiac HEI I'm going to take a look at. Modifying the chevy one wasn't a total loss for me because the 55 chevy has HEI and this thing can be spare parts for it if I have to go back to the drawing board.

 

The other hei I had turned out to be another sbc one. I ordered a cheap Pontiac one.

 

The Pontiac hei did the trick! Works great!

 

Nice.

I was going to say, that's probably the newest tech on the jeep, then I saw the Weber.

 

If you want the Weber to work even better rotate it 90° so both runners are the same length With the carb barrels parallel to the runners this causes one runner to effectively be longer then the other causing an imbalance in the amount of fuel/air mixture available to be sucked into the combustion chamber. Granted to do it causes all sorts of throttle linkage PITA but it is an improvement.

I spoke at length a while back with a guy who was doing exactly what you have done converting GM HEI to various older engines. On the 4cyl engines using a V8 distributor he said at higher rpm the unused spark signals can cause some spark jumping. I do not remember at what kind of rpm he said this might occur but should you find a problem you might look that direction.