Getting another one friday

But the one in it is hard to turn you have to pry it just to turn it

if i cant pull it out..is there a trick???

 

This may be a dumb question, but. Did you remove the dizzy hold down wedge? I never had a dizzy that was hard to move or remove before.

 

it's actually pretty common in my experience with the 335 family of engines (351M/400 etc) I find more often than not it is very hard to turn the distributor & even harder to pull one that is stuck.

I guess I would keep after it with penetrating oil & try to move it (rotate) left & right till it starts to losen up.

I feel for ya man, been there done that.

 

what ive learned about distributors so far from when i replaced my cam and timing gears, and then the time i swapped out to an hei system, is that it can be nessled on that cam gear pretty good, finagle it, yank straight up and out she goes. be sure you are at perfect tdc, make marks and take note of the distributor housings position, as well as where number 1 actually is. when reinstalling its tough sometimes if yours runs the oil pump as well, because then you may need to take a long nutdriver, 3/16 or something it is i believe, and turn the little bugger a little ccw. as you pop the dizzy back in, the rotor moves, so line it up so that it pops into place where u want it, if the hold down fork dont line up you aint got it in all the way.

 

If the distributor has been in a while it may have varnish on it thats making it stick in there, I had to replace mine and it took me 2 days to do it, when i got it out the hole down inside was gummed up, I even had a hard time getting the new one in.

 

The only way my distributor will go "in" is to bump the starter. It sounds simple, but it took too long to figure that one out on my own.
I wonder if turning the rotor counterclockwise would help push it out?