HEI Clearance

So I did some searching, and either my search-fu is weak, or somethings buggy with the search function on the forum....

I had my replacement engine on the stand yesterday (and actually back in the Jeep now, but not really germane), and the gentleman I bought the engine from kindly included an odd-fire HEI, so I dropped it in the hole to check fitment, and I've got an issue.






I know from my reading that the HEI's are always a tight fit on these engines, but I don't see how I can remove enough metal from the Distributor base, intake manifold, and/or manifold bolt in order to seat this thing properly.

Or am I missing something?

Fortunately, if you guys tell me the HEI is a no-go, I do have the original Prestolite out of my blown motor, and a Delco that needs to be rebuilt and would get a pertronix, does the HEI really get me anything the pertronix with a good coil wouldn't?

 

IIRC you need to use a button head bolt (rounded head with an allen wrench hole) for the front of intake manifold.

 

x2 it also takes some grinding on the intake its tight but it works really good once its in.

 

Mine also ran for years with no front intake bolt till I found a button head bolt. I believe I also had to grind on the front of the intake slightly to make the hei work.

 

Yep, button head bolt and a little grinding on the manifold.

 

Just grind the bolt mating surface down, thereby making the manifold less thick in that area, I assume?

 

McMaster-Carr has them - http://www.mcmaster.com/#button-head-cap-screws/=fjp2hc You'll have to buy a bag of 10.

 

No dont grind the surface where the bolt sits on the manifold you want to grind the part of the manifold that sticks out and causing interference with the distributor.

 

grind a little then fit test then grind a little & so on till it drops in

 

Now I'm going to have to figure out where the heck my die grinder is, and whether I've got any burrs or not...... It's always something.

 

And I just had a revelation, and realised I have no idea how this thing should be clocked when and if I get it set down in there. The cap, as I'm sure you all know, is a V8 cap with 2 terminals missing, so I'm going to guess the way the distributor is clocked is going to be pretty important, due to the oddfire design of the motor. So is there a rough clock position where #1 should be for initial setup? And for that matter, which terminal on the cap is usually #1?

 

For an even-fire 6 cylinder, you have 6 different rotor locations in the distributor at 60 degrees apart that will all work, as long as you connect the plug wires in the right order. For odd-fire, I'd expect that you can only choose from 3 locations in 120 degree jumps. As long as #1 at TDC is pointing to one of the 120 degree apart locations (1-6-5-4-3-2, so the normal 1, 5 or 3 location), and you put the wires on in the right order, you should be fine.

Starting at 1, it should go wide spacing (75 degrees), narrow spacing (45 degrees) etc. So any of the three towers that go wide-narrow-wide-narrow... should be ok for #1.

 

here ya go
http://www.jeepster.org/swchapter/hei-2.html

 

Grind the manifold & use a button head.

 

Yep, that's pretty much exactly what mine looks like after grinding it down. Damn that's alot of material to take off. Although the intake manifold isn't exactly a structural member, so what the heck.

 

mine also.

 

Excellent, thanks guys.