4 cylinder HEI
 

I have a Willys L 134 engine I want to adapt a HEI distributor to. The distributor turns CCW like the Pontiac’s do. My question is what engine did Pontiac make with a 4 cylinder HEI distributor. There is little to no info about such a conversion other than one comment made by a guy on YouTube from a video he made nine years ago that he made one from something else but next time was going to use a Pontiac dizzy. I’m hoping to combine the two and get a working model. Don’t flog me too bad for bringing Jeep things here.

How about a 1977 Pontiac Astre 2.5L 151 cu in, I'm not sure about engine rotation.

I owned a 46 Willys for 30 years with the L134 I restored. I finally sold it 3 years ago. It seemed to run just fine with the stock dizzy. It was very dependable. It's not a fast, high winding, performance engine. I'm not sure what the gain would be, but I'd leave it.

My plans are to put a Hamilton or Howell fuel injection system on the flat head. I’m so tired of points and condensers, it seems like a crap shoot for condensers nowadays. Finally got fed up on the old John Deere that I put on a Pertronics system and couldn’t be happier. The problem is that these systems have problems with the interference of the Pertronics type trigger. I just like the thought of a one wire hookup and just carrying a spare ignition module. Thanks for the info I’ll look into the options listed.

A Mopar V8 electronic ign dist would be easy to adapt. Just grind off every other reluctor teeth.

You can use the Mopar ign box or a GM 4 pin HEI module mounted on a heat sink on the side/bottom of the dist body. I have done both.

Thanks Geoff. I’ve realized that the option you mentioned is the only probable way possible. I’ll make it work somehow.

Did the cut and weld years ago on a chrysler mini van to get rid of computer timing control. Used a 2.3 ford distributor and gm 4 pin module.

I had done modified the carb to fixed jet and air bleed.

The ford distributor shaft was long enough that it could be cut off, drilled, modified for the mopar gear.

Almost too easy
Clay

As Geoff said, grind off every other reluctor tooth. Mechanically, the rest is up to you.

The Willys distributor shaft is quite long going down to the oil pump and being driven by the cam gear. I’m going to have to get creative on tying the two together. A little machining and a little welding and measure measure measure. Thanks for all the good info.

I put a mid 70's Chrysler 6 cylinder reluctor and pickup into my '52 GMC six cylinder distributor. Ran 2 wires (shielded twisted pair) to an externally mounted GM HEI module. Been working great for 20,000+ miles. Hardest part was getting the inside of the reluctor shaped to fit over the original point-opening cam in the GMC distributor. Should be easy to do the same with the Willys distributor. As previously said, us a V8 reluctor and grind off every other tooth.

If your going with EFI you might just want to go DIS as well. They make crank sensor splitters that could feed both systems.

I’ve been following a guy that installed EFI on his Willys. He used a corvette pickup and made his own three or four tang trigger. I don’t know what DIS is but I think the ECM doesn’t come with the ability to control advance maybe I’m wrong so a stand alone ignition system with mechanicals advance will have to do. I’ll have to build the distributor and send it in to get the advance curve set up. Someone had an old Sun distributor machine for sale a while ago by me and I should have scooped it up.