aas

That is the earlier distributor, which will need to be replaced.

Would a spacer between the carburetor and adapter give the room needed for the cap to fit?


Lawrenceville, GA

you might find a early truck engine, as,some of them had gear driven tack.  aswell as a industrial 317 which is same as your engine except they had gear driven camshaft and smaller cubes.  there where lots of these engines in washington state as well as bc canada,used in induct. swell as trucks

If I install a spacer on one then I 'll need to space all (linkage). Now I'm looking at space for the hood to come down. You might have something there though. They would have to be under the riser/plenum.

I see your problem.. And it is a tough one.  It's not the carb interfering it is the adapter.. The early distributor is actually shorter than the late one so using the 57 distributor probably makes the problem worse. A Mallory YL small cap MIGHT clear the adapter.. Otherwise the only solution I see it to make a spacer to put underneath the adapter..You can use that distributor you have but you will have no advance curve at all.. There are some more complicated solutions bu it gets into heavy mods on the distributor or redoing the distributor drive and moving it to the front of the motor

I'm going to try Charlie's idea first. It's the cheapest and seems to have the answer. I ordered the block of aluminum I need and getting it machined is no issue, all it takes is money, right? Changing out the distributor to a later model is also in the cards. It's hard to check hood clearance but it appears I"ll have enough room.

Now that you see the problem, I would start over with two new spacers, and move the intake ports over and angle them towards the heads to give you more room for the sparkplug wires to fit in that cap.  It is a bit of work, but the finished product would have more hood clearance, and might help with linkages, etc..  Joe-JDC

JDC

Was there a "crab" cap available ever?

"FREE SAMPLE"

I have never seen a crab cap for this distributor. Joe: I'm not seeing your vision on this one. If I change any angle on the adapters will the carbs still be straight up?

I think he's talking about the aluminum blocks you made, spanning the entire intake flange on each head.  Make those again, but shift the rear carb forward, which will require that the ports be angled to meet the ports in the head.





Lawrenceville, GA