After getting some parts that I ordered in the mail from Ebay, I was able to get back to work on the Dodge. I ordered the brake calipers for the front and the HEI hybrid distributor that I wanted to have on this engine. A little on the distributor. The stock distributor that I would've used, a first gen electronic unit is just a simple dizzy that sends a signal to an external electronic module which then sends a voltage shot to an external coil to fire the spark plugs. The HEI units incorporate a small module into the dizzy and if its like the GM HEI unit, also incorporates the coil into the cap so its a self contained unit. The hybrid unit that I have incorporates the HEI module into the Dizzy's body but still requires the use of an external coil to fire the plugs. This is better than the stock setup as it eliminates the extra wiring that would be required with the external module. Since I already had the brake pads and spark plugs and wires, all I had to do was install the calipers and bolt the hoses to them. The calipers came with the copper washers required to seal the bolts to the body of the caliper. Unfortunately I was unable to find the hardware that is used to secure the caliper to the spindles so I had to hunt them down on Ebay and luckily I found a set with everything I need to secure the calipers for $13. I did still attempt to bleed the brakes or at least see if things were going to work given the age of the master cylinder. When I pumped the pedal the thing was stuck a little then broke free, allowing me to pump the pedal, making the brake booster hiss with each pump. I opened the bleeders on the calipers and attached a vacuum pump to pull the oil from the master cylinder. When I did that and still got nothing from the system, that just told me one thing, I'll be needing a master cylinder. With that I moved on to the dizzy. In order to install the dizzy I had to clean the hole on the engine block to free it of dirt and grime that would make it hard to seat the unit into place. Even with that I still oiled up the rubber O ring and base of the dizzy to aid in seating the unit. I had to rotate the rotor so the tab on the bottom of the shaft will seat itself in the distributor drive shaft inside the engine. Even with that I still had to tap town the unit a little to get the thing fully seated. The dizzy shaft is engaged with the driveshaft so I was able to move on to the next thing, which was installing the coil. In order to install the coil I was going to need some type of bracket or mount to hold the thing. The coil is an old school soda can coil that is typically bolted on the engine close to the distributor unlike the GM HEI unit or the Ford units that mount on the firewall. I ended up using the coil from the 440 engine that's currently on the ground. That coil has a mount already on it. Now, since the spot that I found on the intake to mount the unit has bolt holes that are offset height-wise, I had to install a spacer on the shorter bolt hole. I ended up securing the side that was higher and taking a thick rubber bushing and using it as a spacer to support the other side of the coil mount. After mounting the coil I took the wire that is supposed to go to ground and attached a crimp terminal to slip under the bolt that secures the mount directly to the intake. The other side of the coil received the eye terminal from the dizzy that sends the signal straight to the coil. I already had a wire run from the fuse box inside the cab to feed 12v to the dizzy so all I had to do there was crimp a male terminal to that wire so I can plug it to the female terminal on the dizzy to complete that electrical connection. The last thing that I was able to do was to set the engine to TDC (Top Dead Center) on cylinder #1. Since nothing was hooked up to really allow me to crank the engine via the starter, I had to turn the engine manually with a breaker bar an socket on the crank pulley bolt. I also had to pull the valve cover on the driver's side of the engine to expose the rocker arms so I can watch them move as I rotated the engine. When I got to the point where both the intake and exhaust valves were closed I counted how many quarter turns it took before the exhaust valve started opening, which signified that the cylinder had fired and was going into the exhaust cycle. I counted 4 quarter turns, meaning that the engine goes one full revolution between the valves closing and the exhaust valve opening. Split this in half and the engine turns halfway before the piston hits TDC then another half turn after the cylinder fires and commences the exhaust cycle. Once I got the engine set at that point I looked at where the rotor was pointing then went to put the cap back on and hook up the plug wires. The only problem I had with this next step is that the distributor cap is of a different variant of distributor, probably the "newer" variants that had electronic ignition. I got the spark plug wires that came up for a 70 charger, which would've still had a breaker point distributor and different plug ends on the wires where they hook up to the cap. The terminals on the cap were the male version where the conductors were protrusions pointing out from their bases versus the female version where the terminals were recessed inside the sockets on the cap. Since the box for the wires is already gone, my only option is to find the right distributor cap to put on the dizzy and be able to hook up these wires to. From my quick research it turns out all I needed is a 70 charger distributor cap for the 318 engine. I removed the cap and rotor from the HEI dizzy to take with me to auto zone when I go to get the cap. If they look compatible with one another then we're in business, otherwise then its back to trying to find a cap to match the one that came with the HEI but is able to accommodate the current set of plug wires. So as it stands, I need to get the front disc brake hardware kit to complete that installation and
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