I am going the cp controlled carb and dist for a non cp controlled unit large cap (coil in cap). I was woundering which dist to go with Mallory msd or accel, I am leaning toward the mallory at this time, any tips pros cons, I have a 6al box also.

Any tips on setting the timing and adjusting the dist.

 

If I was in the market for a new dizzy I'd go MSD HEI pro billet, PN 8365.

18 degrees initial, with an 18 degree bushing, with one light/dark grey spring. ~1100-3000 all in. adjust vacuum advance from there.

 

How mush intial do i want?8 to 12? how much total? I think the mallory has 24 deg built in to it, so if my base is at 10 I would have 34 total? Do I check base withthe vac dist and then connect it and run it up to 3,000 and check how much timing i have? how do you tune with the vac? thanks

 

if you're going to use the mallory dizzy, 12 initial w/ the 24 mechanical will be swell.

you don't want to go past 36 degrees total advance.

you don't want to have the vacuum advance connected while checking initial and mechanical advance either.

I personally would want something that has less than 24 degrees mechanical, so that i can run more initial timing instead. The more initial timing you can add, the cleaner your idle will be. also helps throttle response too.

your vacuum can adjustable?

 

I have a mallary because it is the only one that would fit the chassis with the engine moved back. It is junk.

I would not buy another mallory product. Why not use a stock HEI dist with the 6 AL box and a MSD remote coil. I used this set up for years in a v8 datsun and it worked great.
GM makes good distributers and they are cheap

 

Why do you dislike the mallory?

how and why do you check mechanical advance?

 

Why I dislike the mallary dist.

Mine was given to me... guess why...

The shaft is in two pieces. The top where the rotor mounts is brass and the part where the gear goes is steel. They are held together by a "junk yard wars" aggangement with a clamp and bolt like a distributor hold down. This is spinning at 1/2 engine speed. The remedy is to braze it together.

There is a fimbsey plate that covers the weights. If the freeplay is not right the weights will rub the bottom of the plate. This plate is attached to the housing by two bolts that are horozontal and not perpendiculal to the plate and the head of the screw grabs the plate via a slot cut into the side of it. The nut attachs to screw threads on the outside of the housing and also mounts and locate the hold downs for the distributor cap.

All the above has to be removed to get to the weights.

The pickup is glued to a seperate metal plate that is screwed into plate described above. Mine came unglued durring dissasembly. Imagine if this happened at high rpms and the engine misfired with the pick up bouncing around in the dist. They should have designed it with screws going through the pick up and not the plate that it is glued to.

The first rotor that I had had runout in it and did not run true. Picture a little rascal car tire.

To do any work on it; and the whole unit should be removed to make sure all of these said pieces line up and are properly indexed and centered.

Are these enough issues for you? It is a cobled together piece of plunder.

The only reason that I use it is that it is the smallest unit that I could find from an outside diamameter standpoint.