So Im about to begin the duraspark ignition swap on my 85 F150 with a 300 I6. Found a junkyard out of town that had most of what I needed. They gave me a distributor, wire harness and two ignition modules for 100 bucks, I didnt argue. Today I bought a new ignition coil, cap, rotor and plug wires, altogether about 150 bucks into the project so far. Seems to me that I have all I need to do the swap, however my carb is presenting me with a potential, and likely, problem. My carb doesnt appear to have the needed vacuum line to run the advance on the new distributor. The carb on the truck has what appears to be a throttle position sensor (TPS). Somewhat planning for this I aquired a carb from a 1980 F150. I found a great post by a user named dyingtolive in the tech tips and tricks section of the 1980 to 86 trucks sections of this wonderful site. This was a great post showing in detail the process of doing this conversion. However once again the older carb that I have doesnt appear to have the correct vacuum port for the timing advance. If anyone has any suggestions please throw them at me I really miss my truck and I just installed a sweet overhead gunrack in it right before I had to park it. Going to start the conversion tomorrow and at least get it running without the advance hooked up poor thing has been sitting for almost a month

 

I plan to take pics of the carbs im working with to try and help the process just as soon as i figure out how to get them on the post.

 

You can put the pictures in your gallery on this site, and then link to them in your post. Or you can open a account on photobucket or one of those other picture hosting sites, upload the pictures there, and then link to them in your post.

You have the right idea. I would do one thing at a time. You can run the dist without the advance vacuum line hooked up, and the truck will run fine, your gas mileage will just suffer a little bit. But it's better to these things in stages in case you have problems.

 

...............duplicate post.

 

I was just reading about this in the mods forum somewhere, apparently the galleries have
become read-only for existing galleries, new creations go to the Albums.

In any case, yes, pix can be uploaded and embedded into posts.

 

run the vacuum advance line to the vacuum T on the manifold.

 

When you get your new (old) carburetor on and your ignition and everything installed, start the truck. Use your finger to feel whether or not a particular port draws vacuum. It'll be the one that draws no vacuum at idle, but starts drawing vacuum as soon as you crack open the throttle. On my carburetor, the port was on the passenger side, but you may have a different carburetor than I've got.

 

So unfortunately it has been only 10 degrees outside the last couple days and I just couldnt bring myself to go outside and work in this crap yet. however I beleive it may be warming just enough that I could probably get started. anyway about the last couple posts, I already considered just connecting the advance line to the vacuum tree but figured that would affect it as dyingtolive noted the vacuum should only pull off idle. the new(old) carb I have came off of a 1980 f150 so it has to have the correct vacuum port. I can actually see the hole where the port is on my carb where it is shown in the picture in the dsII swap post but this hole doesnt appear to go into the carb it just stops. anyway i dont think im going to have much trouble with all your advice and my knowledge once i actually get started.
THANKS TO ALL

 

Not a problem, man. If you've got any more questions, don't hesitate to ask.

 

Conversion a complete and surprisingly simple success