Distributor Housing Casting Numbers

[Duke W.]

Re: Distributor Housing Casting Numbers

Joe - since the three digits on the "football" are not the last three of the shaft/cam assembly, do you believe they are the last three of the football itself?

Also, have you seen any that have no digits, or digits stamped on the bottom? The last couple I've inspected or that were inspected by someone I was in contact with had no visible stamped digits on the top.

I recall that in my mid-seventies P & A catalogs that the shaft assy. and cam assembly are not separately listed. There are listings for a complete shaft assembly consisting of shaft, cam, weights, and springs, and weights and springs are listed separately.

So how did you come up with a shaft, alone?

Duke

[Joe L.]

Re: Distributor Housing Casting Numbers

Joe - since the three digits on the "football" are not the last three of the shaft/cam assembly, do you believe they are the last three of the football itself?

Also, have you seen any that have no digits, or digits stamped on the bottom? The last couple I've inspected or that were inspected by someone I was in contact with had no visible stamped digits on the top.

I recall that in my mid-seventies P & A catalogs that the shaft assy. and cam assembly are not separately listed. There are listings for a complete shaft assembly consisting of shaft, cam, weights, and springs, and weights and springs are listed separately.

So how did you come up with a shaft, alone?

Duke

Duke------


It's possible the 3 digits were the last three digits of the autocam part number. However, I've never been able to confirm that one way or the other. If I had a drawing for one of the shaft assemblies, that would likely "tell-the-tale", but I don't. Delco-Remy was wont to use the last 3 digits of part numbers as part identifiers, though.

I have seen shaft assemblies that I knew to be original GM that either had no stamped numbers or the numbers on the bottom of the autocam. It is possible that there was one autocam, probably a very commonly used one, that was not identified with a stamping and was "default identified" simply by the fact it had no stamping.

Most of the shaft assemblies were only available as simple shaft+autocam assemblies. There were a few which included the cam, springs, and weights. I have quite a few NOS examples of various GM part numbers. Most are just shaft+autocam. One or two are the more complete assemblies. As I recall, for the most part these more complete assemblies are for 1973 and later applications.

While the 1962-74 shaft assemblies were unique to Corvette (due to the tach drive gear, of course), the auto-cams were usually not unique to Corvettes and can be found on other non-Corvette distributors of the period.