
there is some dist. shaft wear at the bottom, but It should be fine for the few thousand miles I expect to put on the donor engine.

The upper shaft is just nice and shiny. There is next to no play with it in the housing.

I don’t have whatever it was that was stuffed in the openings that was used to lubricate the upper shaft. So I’m using some felt strips to fill the holes.

Once the felt strips were in place I soaked them with 10W30 oil and replaced the plastic oil cover – it is quite delicate and most of what I have read says they get destroyed on removal. I used a dental pick to pull it out and it remains OK for the most part.

There was a build up of corrosion where the steel vacuum advance unit fits on the aluminum dist. base. I used a bit of electrical DE-OX that electricians use on copper/aluminum connections to stop the galvanic corrosion between the differing metals.

A good coat of Silicone cooler paste to help the electronic module’s heat dissipate to the dist. housing.

I installed the dist. on the engine as it is a whole lot easier to position the unit properly with the engine out of the car. It was a bit fiddly getting the gears to mesh with the camshaft and with the oil pump at the same time and for the rotor to be pointing at #1 when it finally slipped into place.

Engine ready for the install (I’ll use the nice chrome valve covers that are now on the engine in the Chevy). I’ll need to do some prep work on the donor TH350 automatic before I can start the install.

Good bye to the ’83 Caprice. I got lots of good parts from the car and it’s not finished yet. Don, who has been kind enough to move it around for me, will take it home and remove the rear differential unit. He hopes to use it in his ’59 Studebaker Champ half ton.
Next: Prepping the TH350