The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay Do you want HEI for your 216/235/261?

I realize there are plenty of folks who prefer to stay with points, and that is perfectly fine in my opinion, but there's been discussion about HEI lately. For a while now I've been promising I'd solve the problem with this distributor and it turned out the answer was simple. And I think this might be a good alternative for a low cost HEI distributor for the 216/235/261...if of course you want one. It dawned on me while shaving this morning...HEI alternatives are few. It looks different from original, but it is okay once you get used to it. Sort of like acne or hairs disappearing from your head and growing out of your ears.

Where this was made is a pure mystery (it isn't marked anywhere) and I know it was designed for the 230-250-292 engine types. The mounting flange of the 230 is wrong for the 235 so you need to carefully grind it or file it off, make a new flange which sits higher and you need to trim the bottom of the shaft where it connects the oil pump. I used a points distributor as a guide. If you look at the images you'll see it is a large distributor, big-boy coil in the cap, vacuum advance and you can see I used some old 235 hardware to modify the mounting...but I could have easily made a different mounting piece. One wire from your ignition switch connects it. I'm not 100% certain but I believe this distributor uses some standard GM parts.

The problem was it leaked oil out the distributor cap. Aside from that it worked fine. I ended up getting one of Tom Langdon's Mini-HEI units so I just cleaned this one and put it in the box to fiddle with later. What was wrong with it? Turns out there were two thin washers between the gear and the body of the distributor...and there should have been something else down there. Something to keep the shaft from moving up/down. The body cavity naturally fills with oil (which lubricates both top and bottom bushing) and since the top didn't fit snugly it leaked right there. A spring washer (wavy washer) between the two thin washers between the gear and body solved that and the spring washer will keep it that way. Soon I'll test it and make certain. I may need to remove one washer to make it a bit less snug or it is possible I need to put the spring washer up top.

In the images attached you can see where oil runs up the shaft cavity. You can see where there was space allowing the shaft to move up/down. The red arrow points to where I put the wavy washer. You can see what the distributor looks like (mine is blue...most today are red or black). And you can see how I modified it to fit the Stovebolt engines.

More to follow on this thought after I test for oil leakage, etc but for now that's a start on one more HEI ignition scheme. Comments are welcome!