Marine Distributor on Car Engine

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Dizzydean

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I recently picked up a marine 440 and am cleaning and using what I can from it. Will the electronic dist work for auto use? Any ideas what the cover is for? It slides on and off. The pic is a spare that was thrown in for parts only the one in question is much cleaner. I was curious on the cover also.

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looks like it came out of a reverse rotation marine engine as stated .
 
Don't know much, but I would think to make sure the rotation is correct? Didn't some marine engines run in a different rotation, when two engines were used?
 
i wouldnt be worried about reverse rotation...thats just a matter of putting the wires on backwards
 
Marine, car, marine, car, marine, car........get it?
 
I don't know why you'd want to use that. I cannot for the life of me remember if those actually rotate backwards or not...........depends on the cam / intermediate gear teeth. If it has centrifugal advance it may or may not "go the right direction."

The way to tell.........

Attempt to "spring" the rotor CCW while holding the shaft. A B/RB rotates CCW so the advance mechanism will allow you to move the rotor CCW "against the spring." If it is locked it may not matter

There MAY be an advantage to this if it's useable: Might reduce high RPM spark scatter due to looseness/ shift in the intermediate gear, etc
 
On reverse rotation marine engines the cranks are knurled in the opposite direction. If used in standard rotation they'll piss oil out the rear main. Just something to look at if the crank is knurled at the seal surface.
 
So I found the engine info tag and its a rh rotation. Still curious on the slip on cover. Maybe to keep oil off of something. In taking this motor apart its opened .060, balabced pistons and rods, painted oil valley, valve train almost new. The id tag says run min 93 octane. Must of been a monster.
 
Marine engines were built to run WFO all day long.
That spacer may have something to do with the oil pump drive,looks like it steps it up out of the block. Or it there some sort of timing advance in the block below distributor? Would gave to look in engine.
 
Dizzydean said:
......... Still curious on the slip on cover...........
Click to expand...
I believe that "cover" is nothing more than a intermediate shaft hold-down/spacer mainly for reverse rotation engines. To use the same distributor in the standard rotation it becomes only a spacer for the extended shaft length.
Cam/intermediate gears for a LM small block (from net). Both use same distributor that rotate in the same direction. Top reverse rotation ..............
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I have a couple A motor marine dist that turn the correct direction,
They are fully mechanical advance and are shorter for the retainer that holds the thrust bearing, (that cast iron thing) for reverse rotation but all the dist housings for marine app are the same shorter than car dist.
 
The collar is simple. Look at the camshaft gear/intermediate shaft gear mesh above. Now imagine the camshaft rotating CCW as viewed from the front. It would try to lift the intermediate shaft up. That collar is to keep that from happening in a CCW engine.
 
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