Technical I’m confused , strange engine , need some insight .

Good point. Harleys run on a 315*/405* split.

 

Some really cool outside-the-box thinking at Bonneville. I have a lot of admiration and respect for the racers who dream up stuff like this!

 

Just keep your hand away from the extra plugs when it's running!

 

Really cool , thanks for the insight on this one .

kinda what I figured but I’m not smart enough to put it all together

 

OK I screwed up, the corrections are in red.
A Mopar 8 cylinder motor has 4 crank throws the rods connect to. That means every 1/4 turn, one cylinder on one bank, then one cylinder on the other bank is at TDC on the compression stroke at one time. The motor has 4 sets of 2 pistons each traveling up and down the cylinders at the same time, These cylinders are called mating cylinders. One of the two mating cylinders is on compression with each crank revolution. If you split your cylinders so each "live cylinder" fires at each 1/2 crank turn. Will probably sound like an old hit or miss engine at idle (if it even idles), but at 8,000 rpm, it will hum along just fine.

The firing order on a Mopar V8 is: 1, 8, 4, 3, 6, 5, 7, 2.

To determine which cylinders in the firing order are mating cylinders, you write the firing order out in pairs like this: 1, 8, 4, 3,
6, 5, 7, 2.
1 and 6 from the firing order are mating cylinders.
8 and 5 from the firing order are mating cylinders.
4 and 7 from the firing order are mating cylinders.
2 and 3 from the firing order are mating cylinders.

As far as the timing marks for ignition timing are concerned, a timing light hooked to #6 plug wire will show the timing marks the same as it would if the timing light was hooked to the number 1 cylinder. The light would light up the timing marks at TDC on both cylinders, but they would be different firing one per crank revolution.

The cylinders on the Mopar V8 are numbered as follows.
2, 4, 6, 8 on the right cylinder bank and
1, 3, 5, 7 on the left cylinder bank.
The motor shown is using the right side cylinder bank, the even number cylinders. 2, 4, 6, & 8
I'm not smart enough to do this on the computer, but if use the firing order stacked with 4 on top of 4 like above, and the even numbered cylinder bank numbers, and draw lines from the firing order numbers to the cylinder bank numbers you find that 2 "live" cylinders fire each revolution of the motor.
Firing order: 1, 8 ,4, 3
6, 5, 7, 2
Cylinder bank 2, 4, 6, 8
Cylinders 6 and 2 fire on the same revolution, cylinders 8 and 4 fire on the same revolution. If you want to use the original timing marks, cylinder 6 now would be the first cylinder in the firing order to fire (its a mating cylinder to #1), number 2 cylinder would be next, 8 would be next, and 4 would be last. Firing order for the now even bank 4 cylinder would be 6, 2, 8, 4

With the 8 cylinder distributor, 4 wires are attached to the "live cylinders", and the other 4 wires are attached to the dead cylinders. You just need to have the "live cylinders" get the hot spark when it needs to be there, you can run those plug wires to any cylinder they need to go to when the cylinder is on the compression stroke. The other 4 plugs are fired into the dead cylinders, order wouldn't matter. The Mopar cylinder numbers and the firing order happen to use every other terminal on the distributor cap for the "live cylinders".

Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

 

This is going to confuse the shit out of some people. These piston's are at the top of their cylinder at the same time, NOT on the same crank throw.

 

You are correct, should have called them mating cylinders, both pistons traveling up and down the cylinders at the same time, or different crank revolutions.
I went back and made corrections in red.

 

That’s so all three food groups are represented, for a perfectly balanced meal. Makes perfect sense now lol

 

Over thinking will make your head hurt. Stop trying to make since on how to make it run smooth.
You see when Pontiac split the 389 in half so to speak, customer complaints were that they didn’t run smooth.

 

You gots to have spark plugs or it will look stupid. :O