My grandpa swapped out the straight six in his 1949 3800 for a 283 out of a 1959 brookwood. I had a shortblock rebuild done on the 283 when I did the restoration a couple years ago. I ran it with the original type distributor for a year but then wanted to drop in an HEI after the old style went out on me. I found a smaller diameter HEI with external coil that I dropped in and it worked beautifully for about a week then the magnetic pickup on the distributor went out. So, I figured it was a faulty part and got a replacement. Dropped it in and again it ran beautifully for about a week and has now gone out as well. I believe that there has to be some sort of problem with how I wired in the HEI or the new coil to cause the magnetic pickup to keep going out. The problem I have is I don't know what I don't know. The distributor had three wires coming out of it, one each for the positive and negative side of the coil and then a ground wire. I wired the ground wire to a spot on the firewall right above the distributor. Then there are two other wires that go to the positive side of the coil, one coming straight from the battery and one from the ignition coil. That is all. You would think with a simple wiring setup like that I couldn't mess it up but I must have. Please help me.
