vg30 distributor mods

[tmooretxk]

Have an 86 pickup with a vg33 swapped for the original vg30 and a holley manifold. Distributor is the original from the vg30 throttle body engine. No advance, in other words . I keep seeing references to swapping in advance & ignition from some GM dist, but never any details. Can anyone point me to some useful info or someone willing to sell?

[datzenmike]

Haven't heard of this but the VG in the middle east wasn't a CAS type and was an EI with normal Vacuum advance. You might find one on e-Bay but the price is crazy.

[72240z]

People just run GM HEI internals of the stock spindle. If you google you'll find a ton on it. The method is used for a lot of other cars not just nissan.

 

The Saudi dizzys are pretty rare. Besides paying 3 bills for one be prepared to wait months/years to find one.

 

I wanted to convert my vg30i years ago and gave up because it wasnt worth the trouble to go backwards. I went with a W series vg30e from a z31.

[tmooretxk]

If I had any concept of how complicated and time consuming that swap would turn out to be, I'd have junked the truck in the first place. I bought it as a project, knowing the engine was erratic with no compression on one cylinder, but it was an interesting model - the 86 1/2 D21, the first extended cab Hardbody, with air, power steering, power windows & mirrors & a 5 speed. When I ordered a Japanese pullout engine, they sent me the 3.3, which I naively thought was pretty cool, and although it was radically different as far as everything bolted to it (intake & exhaust manifolds,dip stick tube, pulleys, oil pan, dist, etc), it had drilled and tapped holes in all the right spots for my vg30 accessories, so I dove in. A year and a half later, after discovering that even the cranks were different diameters, requiring a machine shop to ream a replacement for the original crank pulley (so I could keep all the original v-belt-driven accessories), it finally ran again, at which time we discovered that the throttle body fuel injection had major undiagnosed problems. So I pulled the tbi and cobbled together an adapter for a Ford 1 barrel carb to the tbi manifold. After running it that way for a year (lots of interesting problems, no guts, but great highway mileage) I got a VG30.com Holley manifold and a junkyard holley 2 barrel which has worked out pretty well. But if I run enough advance to get sharp acceleration, it pings & runs on. Will look into the HEI fix - thanks. I've got a spare junkyard dist to experiment on. Anyone with further info please feel free to send it along.

 

One tip if you are doing a VG30 to VG33 swap - use the 3.3 dipstick location, no matter what tube gyrations you have to come up with. Something is different about the crank in the area of the 3.0 dipstick location, and it eats the tip off the dipstick and deposits it somewhere in the oil pan. I'm just hoping it has found a nice comfy spot and stays there until I have sufficient reason to drop the crossmember and pan, cause I'm not making a special trip for it.