Hey George,
Ahh, I did miss that part and had intended to ask. Are you running straight off the cam through the belt or running some sort of offset cover drive? I ask mostly as I rounded up all that stuff for mine and then ended up selling it to fund the Hiriser. Lol WTF was I thinking! The current owner contacted me recently about parting with it himself and may still have it. By the way should this be "FalconGeorge" of the Hamb this is "Algon"...
, Dan
Hahaha, Hey Algon! Long time, no chat! This thing sat for a LOOOONG time, I have been working on a hilborn injected 331 Chevy t bucket. I was going to do mech. FI on the FE too, but doing it on the T has damn near put me in the poorhouse, so I am doing carbs on the FE. I haven’t made the drive yet I want to wait until I have a manifold, snout, and pulleys on the motor before I make the distributor drive, but I have a couple ways I can see to do it.
First thing is to get a timing cover that’s designed to accept a typical 4 bolt mech fuel pump, I got a Glenwood Marine cover. I am going to use an Allen head bolt in the end of the cam, it will accept the hex on the end of a typical driveshaft for a hilborn or enderle pump. I have a shaft about 6” long, that I got off eBay. I am using an accel tach drive dual point, and my hilborn pump driveshaft is 5/8” mean diameter. Once I get everything mocked up, I will figure out how long a drive I need to get the distributor top out in front of the belt, then I will cut my pump driveshaft to length in a lathe, then drill into the end with a 7/16 bit, so I can slide the end of the distributor shaft into the end of the fuel pump driveshaft. It has to go in deep enough so that the end of the pump drive is up past the original hole for the distributor gear roll-pin. I will probably shorten the end of the distributor shaft so I don’t have to drill so deep into the fuel pump driveshaft. Then you drill a hole the right size to accept the roll pin through the fuel pump driveshaft at a right angle, and drive the roll pin in place.
Then you cut two aluminum collars on the lathe, one for the timing cover end, that gets a big hole in the center for the distributor, and four small holes to match the pattern on the timing cover, another for the other end with a big hole in the center that accepts the seal on the distributor, weld them onto a length of aluminum tube that’s the right length, drill and tap a hole in the collar on the distributor end for the distributor clamp, and you are done.
Another way to make the drive itself would be to just use an old FE pump drive, cut it off, and drill a piece of 1/2” hex stock to accept the cut off end of the oil pump drive, and tig the tow pieces together. You follow? So the big end of the hex fits the in the hex in the end of the Allen head bolt holding the timing gear on, and the End of the oil pump driveshaft you have tigged into the other end of the hex stock fits into the end of the distributor shaft. I have the 6” hilborn fuel pump driveshaft on hand anyway, so that’s what I will probably use.
Another piece that I have kicking around is a short hilborn spud drive off the end of a chevy roller that was in a sprint car motor. I could also drill into the end of that piece so I could stick it on the end of an FE oil pump driveshaft, and do it that way.
Just thought, I probably should have sent this as a pm, the HAMB taught me that when it comes to posting stuff like this on an open forum, discretion is the better part of valour...