hi, new guy here. have been looking for a 215 or rover v8 ofr my 31 essex coupe for almost a year, the first one i found was a complete 63 buick hp 4 brl high compresion engine complete with auto trans, not a trans id use but still it was really comlete. my dad talked me out of it telling me how they had a lot of issues. so i reasearched it for a while and from what ive read im kind of glad i didnt buy it. so friday i picked up an early 90s 3.9, it was either that one ro a coild pack 95-96 ish 4.0 that was in the junkyard i figured id be better off with the one that has the distributor as im going to run a carb on it and as few electronics as possible. im going for an early 60s hotrod look with my car, i really want to go with the offy 2x2 intake.
so anyway what are my options for a distributor? can i run the rover distributor with some kind of ignition box? it looks like it has a magnetic pickup but with 3 wires? one guy told me i cant put a buick distributor in my rover with out changine the front cover?
I'm pretty sure the distributor for the Rover is reverse rotation from the 215's. Otherwise Buick 350 HEI would work. Anybody else?
i was checking some stuff out, it looks like the module has 3 wires but the pickup only has 2. i might try to run the pickup with a mopar box. they use a similar magnetic pickup and i am familiar wih them. pretty easy to set up and trouble free. i havent heard anything about the distributor turning the wrong way but the end of the distributor is different. guy said i can use a unilte they take both gears. im not a real big fan of them as they are kind of tempermental and pricey to fix. pricey to carry a spare module too. then again i was looking at a replacement pickup for the range rover dist, it was $200+ the module was $300+ i dont even know how to wire up the RR module so that getting tossed, maybe ill just stick a mopar pickup in the dist too.
The only difference between the Rover and Buick distributor is the gear on the bottom. The Rover and Buick have a slightly different pitch. You must use the same pitch on the cam gear as you use with the distributor. All the timing covers designed for a distributor are basicly the same execpt the timing mark may be different.