Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

[Wayne M.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

Mike -- here's a few eBay pics for your thoughts. First one is a 1111294 ('67 L36/68 w-T.I), new in the box. NO partially filled groove. Second pic is of the extremely rare 1111927 ('69 ZL1) with dummy vac.adv., the only T.I. distrib ever factory-equipped on a Camaro.

Good website (which you're probably familiar with) is:

http://www.camaros.org/trans_ign.shtml

About half way down the page, they say the 1111263 was introduced in time for the 1968 racing season (and always OTC). If Tonawanda-built stock big blocks no longer needed the partially grooved housing by the 1968 model year, (and I think we can all agree on that ) then I wonder why the 263 had one ? [same applies to the '927']. Was there some racing mod. performed on the blocks that necessitated retention of the partially filled groove ?

I've been following the T.I. distrib's on eBay for about 8 years, and I've never seen a 1111258, or any other '67 factory-installed BB [points or T.I.] distrib with a partially filled groove.

BTW, did you see that '263' housing (NOS, I think it said) offered on eBay a couple of weeks ago ? First time I've ever seen any unique part of a ball-bearing distr. offered for sale -- I wonder if the housing would have been listed separately in the performance catalogs ?

[Joe L.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

Mike -- here's a few eBay pics for your thoughts. First one is a 1111294 ('67 L36/68 w-T.I), new in the box. NO partially filled groove. Second pic is of the extremely rare 1111927 ('69 ZL1) with dummy vac.adv., the only T.I. distrib ever factory-equipped on a Camaro.

Good website (which you're probably familiar with) is:

http://www.camaros.org/trans_ign.shtml

About half way down the page, they say the 1111263 was introduced in time for the 1968 racing season (and always OTC). If Tonawanda-built stock big blocks no longer needed the partially grooved housing by the 1968 model year, (and I think we can all agree on that ) then I wonder why the 263 had one ? [same applies to the '927']. Was there some racing mod. performed on the blocks that necessitated retention of the partially filled groove ?

I've been following the T.I. distrib's on eBay for about 8 years, and I've never seen a 1111258, or any other '67 factory-installed BB [points or T.I.] distrib with a partially filled groove.

BTW, did you see that '263' housing (NOS, I think it said) offered on eBay a couple of weeks ago ? First time I've ever seen any unique part of a ball-bearing distr. offered for sale -- I wonder if the housing would have been listed separately in the performance catalogs ?

Wayne------


Some of the component parts of the 1111263 distributor were once available in SERVICE. I was not aware that the housing was one of them, but it may have been. I found the part numbers for many of the pieces quite some time ago, but I forgot now where they're at. I do recall that all of them were discontinued by the very early 70's.

Also, the GM blueprints for the GM #1111240 distributor used for 1967 L-88 show it as using the GM #1851158 housing. This is the full-round housing. However, the specs were changed TWICE and DURING the 1967 model year with respect to the housing. The earlier housings were the GM #1965974 and 1966654, the "half-round" housings.

As a matter of fact, the change to the PRODUCTION specs for the housings from the "half-round" to the "full-round" implies that GM found that the "half-round" represented some sort of problem. We now KNOW that it's not as if the 1851158 came along later as some sort of SERVICE-only, "one-size-fits-all" distributor housing. We now KNOW that the 1851158 "full round" was used in later PRODUCTION for the 1111240 distributor. I strongly suspect that the same thing occurred for other 1967 big block distributors. Just when the change occurred I do not know, but I think it was very late in the model year.

[Mike Z.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

Wayne-
It is interesting that your NOS #294 has a fully grooved housing-guess that goes hand in hand with what Joe is saying. My thought process is to answer the question by what GM installed OEM. What they did as serv repl may or may not be 100% correct and as Joe says, they decided to used the fully grooved as serv repl-my guess is it was more to save a buck, since by then the cars were out of warranty. So, my advise to the member who asked the question is what GM installed in the cars originally and why I think they did so, not try to figure out if something else will work or not.
You mention a couple of other points/questions. One is that you have not seen original 67 BB OEM units with the partial groove-check out my several pics on some of my distributor listings on E-Bay under MichaelZ505. As a vendor, I am not trying to advertise, but my listings have been mentioned by others in several threads (including this one), so I don't think looking at the pics is advertising-at least I do not mean it to be-if you desire more pics, send me a direct E-Address, have tons.
Further, you mention the #294 unit is the ONLY TI unit ever offered on the Camaro. In my listings, I have listed a #267, which was an OEM option on the 67 & 68 (but not 69) Z-28. It looks similar to Corvette units of the day-with mechanical tach drive and specs similar to many solid lifter models and uses the same #201 vac canister of many 67-70 Corvette units. It makes sense the ZL-1 used the #373 vac (blocked) as the L-88-had not seen a #294 before.
Interestingly, the #263 was a very nice piece-ball bearings instead of bushings and no "floating" coil P/U/point plate, as there is no provision for a vac canister-uses fully mechanical advance curve mapping. I do see them every now and then on E-Bay-most of them NOS, but they don't sell for much-at least not what I would have thought. Problem for me is: none of the internal parts are interchangeable with OEM units (mainshaft, coil P/U, pole piece, etc. are all different), so I stopped buying them-but at least I got a good look at several when I was interested in them. As I tell others who ask about them and think they were installed on the L-88--GM never, never installed a no vac canister unit in an OEM application: not the L-88, ZL-1 or anything else I know of. I believe this unit was intended for use in GM's un-official racing efforts of the day-I am pretty sure they were the unit Roger Penske used in many of his efforts including the CanAm cars that ran the reverse rotation cam/distributors (basically a ZL-1 motor)-maybe that was the reason for the three versions of the #263 I have seen, as they were hot items with racers from about 66-71 or so.
MichaelZ505

[John H.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

Further, you mention the #294 unit is the ONLY TI unit ever offered on the Camaro. In my listings, I have listed a #267, which was an OEM option on the 67 & 68 (but not 69) Z-28.

Mike -

Transistor ignition was never available from the factory on any '67-'68 Z/28; 67's and early 68's used the 1111266 point distributor, and later 68's used the 1111467. The 267 T.I. distributor was released in November, 1966, and was only available as an over-the-counter part.

[Mike Z.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

John-
I do not pretend to be a Camaro expert-perhaps you are, but I got my information from a Camaro Web site: www.chevy-camaro.com
Maybe you should educate them-as I say, my knowledge and interest has more to do with Corvettes. Thank you for your input, I will be glad to share it with my Camaro customers and let them make the decision. I can tell you, however; I have had several, what I interpute as knowledgable Camaro guys, very interested in and ask for this part number as being correct as OEM.
MichaelZ505

[Wayne M.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

Wayne-.......Further, you mention the #294 unit is the ONLY TI unit ever offered on the Camaro. In my listings, I have listed a #267, which was an OEM option on the 67 & 68 (but not 69) Z-28. It looks similar to Corvette units of the day-with mechanical tach drive and specs similar to many solid lifter models and uses the same #201 vac canister of many 67-70 Corvette units. ...

Mike -- if you re-read my first line, I mentioned the 1111294 with respect to the'67 L36 and L68 (Corvette implied).

As to the Camaro 1111267, I'll leave the experts battle that one out. One thing (and we may have differed on this previously) is that, IMO and that of the Delco Spec book, the vacuum can is MS 400 15, not the '201'. I have a '267' dated 9_D_14 with (what's left of) this can. You can see where they welded the rod to the bracket, then sliced off the can . There was an NOS 400 can on eBay about 6 months ago. I bid $60, but lost it to the next highest bidder (obviously a Camaro guy).

[John H.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

John-
I do not pretend to be a Camaro expert-perhaps you are, but I got my information from a Camaro Web site: www.chevy-camaro.com
Maybe you should educate them-as I say, my knowledge and interest has more to do with Corvettes. Thank you for your input, I will be glad to share it with my Camaro customers and let them make the decision. I can tell you, however; I have had several, what I interpute as knowledgable Camaro guys, very interested in and ask for this part number as being correct as OEM.
MichaelZ505

Mike -

You (and the guys at www.chevy-camaro.com) might want to visit our CRG (Camaro Research Group) site at www.camaros.org; specifically, we have a comprehensive paper on 1st-generation Camaro Transistor Ignition applications at:

http://www.camaros.org/trans_ign.shtml

The only Camaros that ever left Norwood with T.I. were the sixty-nine 1969 ZL-1's.

I've been a Core Member of the CRG for about ten years, and our site is considered by most in the hobby to be the premier source for '67-'69 Camaro restoration information. Jerry MacNeish, restorer/racer and author of the two definitive books on the '67-'68 Z/28 and the '69 Z/28 and SS, is also one of our Core Members.

[Richard M.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

For future reference of SB/BB oiling see photos in this post...

https://www.forums.ncrs.org/showthre...230#post778230

[Mike Z.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

Wayne, Joe- The #263 dist was actually never a OEM unit, but rather was available only in the Performance Catalog in the mid-late 60's through mid 70's (I have several with dates all over the board). At any rate-get this: the same P/N was used for 4 different configurations; early BB (partial filled lower groove) in either clockwise or counter clockwise rotation and late BB/all SB (full groove) in either clockwise or counter clockwise rotation. I believe the reason for the option on the rotation has to do with; the hot ticket in racing in that era was direct gear drive for the cam, which means the rotation of the cam (and distributor) will be counter to OEM. Now a days, all the gear drives have an idler and I don't know of any direct drive availability today, but GM offered them in the 60-70's. The clockwise rotation is what you would need for any conventional cam (no direct gear drive): you can ID this by looking at the lower gear-the teeth run from bottom to top, lean to the right. Beware; the counter rotation units should also have a "flipped" "football" at the top of the mainshaft and the Pole Piece has the slot on the right side of center vs. left on the OEM rotation. Having said that; there are alot of units out there today with the reverse rotation gear, but the top is all correct for clockwise-these units I believe were marketed by Gentile-a distributor rebuilder/manufacturer of the day. Guess he bought all the parts and assembled them, but used the wrong lower gear-a simple gear change and you are good to go.
These are fantastic distributors; I build them for several vintage T/A race teams and they run them 8000 RPM all day long-and they live. They will (any TI electro-mag unit will) "trigger" most any aftermarket amp i.e., MSD (except the 7 series), but some of the teams have us prep factory amps (usually the #1115005) and run a redundant system, just like Penske did back in the day-flip a switch and go from one amp to the other (back in the day, they failed regularly)-really cool! Hope this helps.

[Tom B.]

Re: Special distrib. req'd for '67 BB cam oiling ?

Wayne------
Some of the component parts of the 1111263 distributor were once available in SERVICE. I was not aware that the housing was one of them, but it may have been. I found the part numbers for many of the pieces quite some time ago, but I forgot now where they're at. I do recall that all of them were discontinued by the very early 70's.

Does anyone have a copy of the Performance Catalog from the late 60's early 70's? (early catalog would probably show 3 versions of the same P/N). The oldest one I have is like early-mid 80's and I don't see a #263 listed.
MichaelZ505

I have my old copy of the Chevrolet Parts and Accessories Dept. Hotline Bulletin Heavy Duty Parts list dated 12/7/1973 which proceeded the first issue of the Chevrolet Power Manual. The listing for the 1111263 is as follows under 396-427-454.

1111263 Distributor (Ign. Imp. Mech.) (Tach Dr.) Gear Driven Cam

No individual components are listed except for the amplifier, wire harness and coil which are noted as also being part of 3997782 which is listed as a Transistor Ign. Unit. This would be a complete changeover package with everything you needed to install transistor ignition. I never had one of these for a Corvette but I did order and received a couple of these transistor ignition packages for '67-'69 442 Oldsmobiles in 1975.

Tom