Anyone gone Distributorless?

Working toward it and putting my TIG welder that I demo'd at the Oskosk airshow to good use

 

Who's got two thumbs and is jealous? THIS GUY!! That is way cool!

What are your plans for adding oil to the engine and a breather? I am looking at removing the coils from the brackets and space the coils around the oil fill cap and breather. Though I do have a set of passengerside stamped steel covers I'm still contemplating using them and figuring out a way to add oil and a breather to them at some point.


My crude metal tab mounting on my OHC engine if you haven't seen it.

 

Kudos to you guys for working on this!!!!

For the Buick V8 - think about oil fill and maybe even crankcase ventilation behind the carburetor/throttle body where the stock PCV is located, if the valve covers are no longer an option. There's still lots of room on the covers for ventilation, though...think about it and just don't worry about the vent facing "up".

Devon

 

Exactly the plan and easy with the SPX manifold

 

Two and a half years later I can finally put some closure on this thread

Driver's side. Ran into the space issue with the oil cap and breather. I have a second passenger side cover with no holes that I can eventually install the coils on and replace this one, but right now I don't have the time to R&D a replacement for the oil fill cap and breather. For now coil #7 resides on top of the breather p


And the passengerside.


And it finally running with no distributor! Case closed. p
[video=youtube;iGSrYLsvxPM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGSrYLsvxPM&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

And just a little showing off, because it's high tech in my old Buick, the digital dash cluster for those who haven't seen it yet :grin:
[video=youtube;RGROrwcl-LY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGROrwcl-LY&feature=c4-overview&list=UUspCpZrffJo4BJ5Am4jH-sA[/video]

 

Dude... Awefrikinsome!

 

Nice job!

 

Thanks :TU:

 

congrats randal looks awesome, and you do some fantastic work.

 

Thanks Dan!

 

Who makes those digital sweep gauges?

 

Digital sweep gauges? If you are talking about the set up in my Skylark its a monitor behind the dashboard with a compact computer running the MegaSquirt tuning software that allows customized gauges.

 

ahha clever guy

 

Some background R&D pictures.

It's a USB connected and powered monitor.


Cut the cluster plastic with a dremel, stuck the monitor in it. You can see the large washer with rubber insulator that has the bolt that goes to the back of the monitor to hold it in place.


The Windows 7 car computer mounted in the trunk. Has a signal wire that powers it up when the key is turned on and shuts down about a minute after the car is turned off. I have it go into and out of hibernation mode.

 

One thing I have never really liked about distributeres is the back lash in the dist gear to the cam gear. Will that have any effect in what your doing?

 

Huh? No? The timing chain tension (or lack of) has far more influence on conventional timing wander than the back lash ever should. As far as driving a cam sensor the amount of accumulated error means nothing. I have it trigger approximately 30 before the missing tooth on the crankshaft. The cam sensor is just a flag to the ECU to say the next missing tooth is the power stroke of the #1 cylinder. Rather it triggers 179 sooner or 29 later, it doesn't matter too much, as long as the trigger comes before the missing tooth. 30 is just good conventional practice, and actually it only needs to trigger it once (during cranking the engine) and the ECU keeps track of the tooth count from there and actually completely ignores the cam sensor. aka I can disconnect the cam sensor after start up and it will still run sequentially without a hiccup.

 

if running a bronze gear as it wears there is a point whare there is not enough gear. The oil pump pressure is supposed to take up the slack on a good gear. Timing cover and gasget thickness will determing the back lash of the gear. Just wondering if you ever encountered too much backlash. I had a block that had worn into the block at the cam to block thrust surface. I would wear out a bronze gear in about a yr. I did not have a high volume oil pump.

 

I have never ran a bronze gear. My current engine runs a roller cam with a bearing on the nose and shims to control cam walk. Vertical movement is controlled by simply shimming the distributor between the housing and gear. Timing chain stretch is still going to be the number one variable change in timing on the distributor if everything is set up right. If you are eating distributor gears there are other issues at play and I would consider it an unhealthy condition. In any case, for a cam sensor, the tolerance allowed and still work 100% perfectly is nearly 180 of distributor rotation. Several teeth off setting the distributor in and it'll still work perfectly.

 

I repaired the picture links to the technical pictures related to going distributorless on the Buick 455.