Hopefully you won't have to remove it, Dave. As I was careful to say in my first sentence "if you get to the end of the list and you haven't sorted it..." So it is a last resort check, but as I also said it is generously mentioned in shop manuals through the years so somebody had learned something about that very narrow clearance and wanted to pass it along. Or I suppose somebody could argue they just owned stock in ink and paper companies and wanted to be certain they made the manuals as verbose as possible.
One other thing to mention: When you check the resistance of plug wires I've decided it is worth the time to check them at the inside of the distributor...once the wires are installed you can just tip up the distributor cap and go from there. My mini-Hei from Tom had a defective distributor cap. Tom wouldn't have ever seen it and I never told him because he's a gentleman and there was no reason to ask him to send me another but one of the little nipples on the top was loose and didn't make good connection with the spade piece on the inside. Played havoc with resistance checking and as you'd expect didn't help the engine run, either. Sort of like having two spark plugs on that one wire to be honest. The way I noticed it was when I removed the plug wire (to check resistance, actually), the nipple piece followed it. Even jamming it back in didn't help. It was okay for a while but once the engine warmed up, it would separate again and start missing. I JB-Welded it in place and saved the cap for reasons that probably only make sense to me, but again it may be worth checking. The Made in USA Delco distributor cap if you need it is GM#1979208 and they show up on eBay from time to time. Good luck.
~ Jon 1952 1/2 ton with 1959 235 | T5 with 3.07 rear end
