I am having brain fade. if i am facing the front of my truck which way do I need to turn the distributor to advance the timing cw or ccw? 89 460.

 

somebody has to know. My predicament is the distributor is frozen and I need to beat on it to move it and want to move it in the direction that would advance the timeing.

 

The rotor turns counterclockwise, so turn the distributor base clockwise to advance.

Of course, a liberal dousing of the base in your favorite flavor of penetrating oil and a few heat cycles should go a long way in loosening up that frozen distributor!

Good luck...
Pat

 

Thank you much. I have been giving it liberal doses of pb blaster on a regular basis and the dang thing is still solid as a rock. A local Ford tech with about 30 years experience said that this is a common problem with the 460's. Just to confirm clockwise as I am facing it? thanks jeff

 

Yup...or clockwise as you're standing directly over it looking down. However you wanna look at it...

Pat

 

Thanks, I was able hammer it enough to get it to 12* BTDC. Strange thing about this is when motor was stoned cold I could move the dist. a little without much trouble as soon as it was fully warmed up the dang thing was solid again forcing me to use the big wrench/hammer technique.

 

12º sounds like a pretty good number to me...it's been a good number of years since my '74 460 had a valve cover decal, but I'd swear it called for 14º from the factory.

I'm not sure if you're psyched up for the project, but do you think the distributor would come out when the engine's cold so you might be able to clean up the base and maybe put a new gasket on it? Just a thought. The fact that it won't turn when hot sounds reasonable...I'm no metallurgist, but I believe aluminum expands faster than cast iron, so as the engine heats up, the distributor base might be getting wedged against the hole.

Glad you made SOME progress, anyway!
Pat

 

stock timing is 10* on my 89. I had previously tired 14 but found it a little too much. So far it has not pinged at 12* but I have not pulled any hills with it yet.