Slant six - what vacuum advance pod ?

[64V200conv]

I have a stock slant six in a 64 Valiant convertible that is being upgraded with an electronic dist and ecm set up. I want to replace the vacuum advance pod but I do not know which one to order. Like I said it is a stock motor. Just a cruiser to shows and " Sunday drives". Distributor is tag # 3755042 and the pod arm is stamped 8.5R. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Garrett Ellison]

Give a shout out to HalifaxHops, he is the master of stock configuration performance distributors...

 

[AJ/FormS]

8.5 ain't too bad; that would be 17 crank degrees.

For my project, I had to visit an old-time parts house who still have catalogs. I sat down with it for about a half hour and started pulling PNs. Just about everything was discontinued; but I found one I liked.
I took it home and started grinding on it. Eventually I got 22 crank degrees out of it. You can mod any can this way but it's kindof tricky,lol.

Before I got into it, I took an old non-working unit apart to see how it worked.There is nothing different inside as far as I could tell. There is a limiter step on the arm, outside the pod. When it hits the case, advancing stops. So for more advance, that was the thing I attacked.

 

[Mattax]

The challenger here is that practically all magnetic pickup distributors were made for the smog era.
Its unlikely the new distributor you got has been recurved for your pre-smog '64.
Do that, and then you get the correct vacuum module or one thats close.
Don't do that, and there is a high probability the engine will ping at part throttle moderate load with vacuum advance hooked up.
If you have a timing light, and tach, you can check the begining of the advance on the engine.
With a dialback light or timing tape you can get the entire advance, or at least enough to know what the situation is.
or you can have someone check it on a distributor machine (like halifaxhops)