I have an 85 T/A with an H code 305 in it, it also has a Rochester 4 barrel carb that was on it. I recently changed it out with an Edelbrock 600 Performance Series carb. The factory carb had electrical connections on both the top as well as the front, and naturally the replacement carb. does'nt. The distributor that is presently in the car has no vacuam advance setup on it & I have been told by friends that I need to replace that dist. with 1 with vacuam advance on it, so that the carbs vacuam and not the computer will be advancing the timing. My problem right now is the fact that all of the distributors that I'm looking at have a 4 wire module in them and the one that I have presently has a total of 7 wires hooked to the module, 3 going from the dist. to the cap and 4 coming from the side of dist. and going to a plug on the firewall. Any advice as what steps to take next ?? I'm really not sure what to disconnect at the present time. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated, Thanx !!!

 

You need a standard non-computer controlled HEI distributor (or performance replacement equivalent- I like the dirt-cheap Summit HEI, personally). Yes, the non-cc distributor WILL use a 4 pin module. The 5 or 7 pins are only used when the ECM is used to control the timing curve.

You will leave the timing plug disconnected on your new non-cc distributor (4 wires, sticking out the back of your current distributor) since the non-cc distributor won't have such a connection.

Obviously, the minute you ditched the computer controlled carb you lit the check engine bulb so you might want to take it out, just so it's not annoying you at night.

That's really all there is to it. Set the new non-cc distributor at an initial timing of 10-12* BTDC and hold on! You're gonna love the difference in power and throttle response versus using the cc-distributor.