You are looking at the part just below the two rivets in your photo. That is where the spark jumps to the individual spark plug contacts under the distributor cap. The spring-metal tab in the middle of the rotor presses on a spring-loaded carbon brush in the middle of the cap. That comes from the ignition coil.
Pointing to cylinder number one is actually a Chrysler thing and could potentially create more problems for you, depending on how your distributor is installed. Chrysler distributors have a screwdriver slot tip and can only be installed two ways. GM distributors have their drive gears on the distributor and they have roughly a dozen helical teeth, so yours can be installed the same number of ways. All you have to worry about, if you are off a tooth or two, is to get proper timing, you may end up with the vacuum advance unit hitting the firewall. Beyond that, all you have to do is find top dead center on the compression stroke for cylinder number one, look where the tip of the rotor is facing, then, when the cap is installed, put spark plug wire number one in that tower on top of the cap. The rest follow around in order, for GM and Chrysler V-8 engines, 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2. Most Ford engines use the same pattern but they number their cylinders differently.
When you are done, there is a one in eight chance the rotor tip will be pointing to cylinder number one when it is at top dead center, but regardless, that is not the goal. If you find you cannot adjust ignition timing far enough without the vacuum advance unit hitting something, you will need to remove the hold-down clamp, lift the distributor up just far enough so you can turn the shaft by turning the rotor, then rotate it the needed way, and reinstall it. Observe the rotor will turn as the distributor is dropped into place due to how the spiral gears go into mesh, so calculate how much to turn the rotor after you have the distributor lifted out.
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Saturday, August 25th, 2018 AT 4:16 PM
