Aftermarket ford distributor?

Im starting to help brother Dustin get his grandfather's 71 Thunderbird back on the road. A few years ago,  we got an edelbrock carb from bobzilla, and had it running and driving pretty well. Until the mechanical advance in the distributor seized up. 

Were now looking at distributor for the 429 in it. He wangs to get away from the points, and i can't blame him. He also wants as self contained as possible,  and not a large cap hei setup. He found this:

looks to be a neat setup. Apparently uses gm hei guts with a small cap. 

Ive used the large cap hei ford distributor on a few 302 over the years, but never thos style.

Thoughts and experiences? Any idea what the cap is from so we can source replacement? 

They work very well, but be sure you're getting a quality piece.  I have a complete HEI for a Pontiac that was brand new for $29.  It's chinesium and I never installed it because every single part looked like it was defective.

There are dozens of good manufacturers of small and large-cap HEI distributors for the 385 family.  Pay very close attention, though.  Some require a crank trigger, some require either an OEM or aftermarket ignition box, unlike a true HEI which is totally self-contained.

If you have room for it, I suggest a full-size cap HEI.  Here is a bargain-basement option that I have used before and they didn't suck completely:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sdm-pce376104602/make/ford

You could also just get a later Ford dizzy from the junkyard.  They're the same for 351C, 351M, 400, 429, and 460.

His goal is almost stock appearance and easy to change back. Car is a full blown survivor minus the carb (date coded original in trunk) and a few other details. Wether i agree or not, his call.

He balked at the cost of a reman distributor and pertronix, and i can't really blame him ($200-ish) as the aftermarket part is cheaper even with wires and a coil!

Then I would snag a magnetic dizzy from a later truck with a 460, clean the contacts in the cap, and stab it in.  Should be $25 and it ditches the points.

Ford switched from points to the Duraspark in 75, so it's pretty much as simple as finding a late-70s/early 80s big block or 351 and stealing the dizzy and associated parts.  Duraspark was also remarkably bulletproof and reliable.

I too would go with a later model Duraspark wrecking yard dist as Curtis says. The only way I'd go with the Chinese/Taiwan dists would be when no other reasonable priced options were available. I went with cheap eB*y Chinese alloy bodied dists as replacements for my original oem plastic bodied units in my '95 GMC Jimmy and 2000 Silverado. These cheap dists worked surprisingly well during the rest of the time that I owned them (2-4 years). Note: I replaced the new Chinese ign. modules with the original GM modules.

I passed the duraspark by him. He wants to avoid the external box and additional wiring  if at all possible. 

Then inform him that he can gamble on the chinesium one, or he can pony up for a good one.  What he wants and what he wants to spend are not in alignment.

I think we're also overlooking something.

Define "seized" advance.  What's preventing us from just un-seizing the weights?

Fix the weights and add an $80 Pertronix?

If the weights can't be fixed, $25 for a replacement points dizzy from a junkyard and add an $80 Pertronix?  For $100 he could have a reliable-as-dirt ignition without points, or he can gamble on that low-buck replacement

I also suggest the Duraspark system. It has an external box but if something goes wrong you only need to replace the box.

IF you go this route go with the Motorcraft branded boxes.

Any other others and your taking a chance on early failure. 

I would only recommend a cheap eB*yish Chinese dist if nothing else was available at a reasonable price (as was the case with my GMs). A points dist from a yard would probably be fine on a none-daily driver. Our occasionally driven '67 Buick Skylark (w/SBC conv) does just fine with a points dist. Just be sure to run name brand points and condensers.

I have that very distributor on my '72 Torino with 351C.  No complaints so far.  I have not had a need to replace the cap or internals.  I'd planned just buying another complete unit if I ever had the need to replace anything.  It's cheap enough to do that, though wasteful.  I ended up buying a complete Holley Sniper EFI with distributor, so I don't think I'll have to cross that bridge.

In reply to Apis Mellifera :

Can you take a measurement from the manifold to the top of the cap? I want to see if it will clear the stock air cleaner and ither stuff. 

Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) said:

I passed the duraspark by him. He wants to avoid the external box and additional wiring  if at all possible. 

You can run Duraspark on a GM HEI control module.  Incredibly easy to tuck one of those away where it won't be seen.

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

When do you need it?  The car is in storage two hours north and I will be up there in about two weeks or so.  Here is a picture of what was in it when I bought the car:

It's one of those giant coil-on-cap things, which is why I replaced it.  It fit the stock air cleaner.  I'll look for a current photo.

Here's a current pic:

Though I'm using an Edelbrock 11" air cleaner, the top is the stock unit for the 9" element.  Plenty of room and other than the color, looks stockish.

Hes got the giant air cleaner unit on his, with about an inch and a half of clearance. Also a bunch of nearby accessories. My biggest concern would be vertical height for the air cleaner,  as the cap looks to be of the average small block size.

I hate im not fluent Or even very familiar with ford. Just dont know what i dont know about them. 

Keep the feedback coming!

The factory air cleaner base has an indent for the distributor.  The Cleveland is kind of in between a BBF and SBF.  It uses the BB distributor, but has a SB bell housing, for example.  The dizzy cap appears to be the same as a SB cap.  It's smaller in diameter than the 5.0 cap for sure, but probably the same overall height (block to wires) as the earlier points units.  If his car has AC, as you can see, the smaller (blue) distributor sits below the AC hose..  On a Cleveland, anyway.  I had another '72 Torino with a 400 and it had the same clearance.  Not sure if any of this helps.

Here's the factory distributor in the 400 (a development of the Cleveland, so not an BB) Torino.  It's the same size as the blue cap distributor above that I used in the 351C car and should be the same as the one in a 429 T-bird.  It's not a direct comparison, but through this deduction, I'd say the new one will fit just like the old one.  I'll try to get some measurement when I go up to our farm if you still need them.

And for what it's worth, here's a better angle of the factory Cleveland/BBF distributor in place, sitting well below the carb and AC compressor bracket.  This was a '73 Cleveland engine I bought last year.

I've got a functional Mallory Uni-Lite distributor from my 351 Cleveland that I'd sell Michael.   I pulled it after verifying functional to replace it with an MSD distributor and ignition bits.   

Mr_Asa said:

Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) said:

I passed the duraspark by him. He wants to avoid the external box and additional wiring  if at all possible. 

You can run Duraspark on a GM HEI control module.  Incredibly easy to tuck one of those away where it won't be seen.

This!  Use a Ford electronic distributor and a HEI control module tucked away like Mr Asa said.

Just putting a Pertronix kit in his existing distributor seems a lot easier to me.

For that matter points distributors, worked pretty well for 80 years or so...I never had any issues with them.

I'd fix the mechanical advance. 

Apparently you can also trigger an HEI with points, and the points last just about forever if you do because they pass no current.

The only pain in the butt with converting a points Ford to electronic ignition is that Ford didn't use an external ballast resistor to drop the coil voltage down to something points could live with, they had a resistor wire.  IIRC it's part of the harness between the ignition switch and the firewall.   And Ford being Ford, the ignition switch only sends power in the run position, NOT cranking, so you still need the switched power coming off of the starter solenoid.  The two wires splice in somewhere in the engine side of the wiring harness.

As seen above, there are more than few way to go on this. Repairing the current dist would probably be the cheapest route. Next would be finding a dist in a wrecking yard which is unlikely at date (at least in the yards around my area). Third would be chasing a good unit on eB*y, etc. From there you're looking at upgrading to a newer Ford electronic unit, or a newly manufactured replacement.