231 even fire or odd??

1st post... Hey, from (far) N. CA. Bought a '64' CJ5 15yrs ago as my daily driver and weekend mountain goat. Guy I bought it from said it had a freshly rebuild buick 231 V6 odd fire under the hood. Question is, is it truley an odd fire? Engine block casting # is 1249432, heads are #1249175 and I think these numbers inidicate 1975-1976 odd fire, but yesterday I bought a new cap for the HEI unit and found it was the wrong one, so I took my old cap to the parts house where they varified that I've been running an even fire HEI. Sure enough, the even fire cap was a match to the old one. Can a odd fire motor run well with an even fire HEI? What the heck have I got? My casting #s are right. Are my sources wrong? Thanks, Rusty

 

All kinds of weird things happen when getting parts (ignition) for the odd fire. You need the proper combination of odd fire parts in the Hei dist to work right. Special parts are the pick-up coil assy (odd spacing), main shaft reluctor (3 prongs not 6), rotor with long tongue, cap with odd spaced towers. Pic's would help.

Welcome from Ga.

 

The even-fire distributor can be converted to odd-fire, but you have to cut three of the reluctor prongs off. There's a how-to for this around here somewhere.

So it's possible that you have an even-fire distributor that's working properly in an odd-fire engine. Don't know about the rest of the parts compatibility other than you have to change the pickup.

 

my bet is if you chase the numbers you will find an even fire, upon looking thats an odd fire casting number alright

 

The casting numbers show it as odd fire with the proper heads for that block.

 

HEI's EXPOSED

 

Thanks Walt. Thanks for confirming my casting #'s. Looks like I definately have an odd fire motor with even fire HEI componants. I read that the (in cap) coil is the same for even and odd, but the cap I have is deffinately the even fire style and the pick up coil (under the weights) appears to be the odd fire style. If I get real curious, I'll check the number of points on the reluctor. Interesting stuff.. 10 years and 30,000 miles ago when I replaced the std. distributor with this used HEI, I never thought about all of this.

 

Great info on this site : )

 

Inside the Distributor............Even fire has 6 evenly spaced points.............Odd fire also has 6 but spaced unevenly in groups of two. If that is not confusing enough then pull the pan...........On the Odd fire motors the Connecting Rods are grouped in pairs 2 per journal.............on a even fire motor they are a split Journal on the crankshaft or 6 separate positions to connect your rods to.

 

Well, its back together again and running well but I'm still curious as to what I have, whether is was done right and if I can make it better. I may eventually pull the pan to verify, but I think that unless its possible to fit a even fire crank to a odd fire block, that I do have an odd fire motor, as confirmed though casting #'s by Walt. That said, we know that this odd fire motor is using at least some even fire HEI components including an even fire cap for sure.
Timgr states that "the even-fire distributor can be converted to odd-fire, but you have to cut three of the reluctor prongs off". Too much going on right now with the holidays, but it looks like I'll have to pull that shaft to check those reluctor prongs. I did however look closely at the comparison photo provided by Tarry99 and see that although my pick-up coil looks like the even fire version, the two "white" wires connect via factory spade connectors like in the odd fire photo. Here are some part #'s. HEI alum. base stamped #3E11. Pick-up coil #990 5J63DV. New HEI parts (installed today) are BWD Select parts purchased from O'Rielly's Auto Parts. Rotor #D157 / M12163, Coil #E43P / V09163 & Cap #C198 / V10342. The box for the Cap also reads TETE TAPA. I'll have to research my HEI base and pick-coil #'s to see what they are. Warloch, I know you wrote "you have to use an OF cap on an EF HEI after the conversion to OF for it to work right", but I'm running an even fire cap on what I suspect might be an odd fire HEI unit, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll post my finds after the holidays along with more questions no doubt. Untill then I'm probably waisting everyones time. My goal here is to make sure it was done right and if not to correct it and make the old CJ run even better. THANKS everyone for your help and comments and MERRY CHRISTMAS : )

 

Ahhhh... $$$ So that's why someone did that.. Thanks Chuck, great link! Hmmm.. Do you think mine would be running half way decent had the three points not been ground off? They must be..... Thanks again!