What's inside this GM distributor ?

A guy in my club is putting together an all steel 40 Willys coupe that his cousin had owned for 40 yrs but never got it together. The cousin lived on the other side of the country and has passed so no help in figuring out this stuff.
This is the distributor, what is that round thing ?
The distributor cap had a 3/8's hole drilled in between every plug wire nipple on the side of the cap, for venting gasses I assume. Looks like possibly tach drive unit.

 

that's the Chevy K66 Transistor Ignition distributor, from a corvette....usually worth a few bills.

I bought two for $10 each at a swap meet in the mid 00s, put one in my 55 with an MSD, sold the other for 3 bills on ebay.

 

Electronic ignition reluctor and stator..... of some kind. Never seen one like this.

 

The engine is a tall deck 427 based, would the GM distributor be long enough for that ?

 

I had a 71 LT-1 with that distributor. GM TI (transistorized Ignition). Had a brain box mounted in front of the left front inner fender. Started on 12v but ran on 8v. Lots of fun to service.

 

yeah its the TI distributor. Here is a link to a good overview of the whole system that Chevy had developed. Its worth pulling it out and looking to see if its the really rare ball bearing unit. Those are very hard to find.

https://www.camaros.org/trans_ign.shtml

 

Optional on 327/350 hp.

 

I don't know, it depends on the intake.

Is it engaging the oil pump OK? Has the distributor been modified to fit that engine? Is this a fresh build, or is it stuff that used to work together?

 

No idea, he knows it's 509 ci and supposedly a new build, he only found a receipt from an engine builder but no spec sheet, so he doesn't know compression, cam size, nothing. I mentioned to him to make sure the oil pump is engaged, he's thinking about taking it to a dyno shop for initial start up and sorting out.
The intake looks like a dual plane but it has a dominator carb, no adapter, I've never seen a dual plane dominator intake before. The cousin lived in California but I have no idea where, one would hope it's not a boat motor.

 

No, you have to use a taller distributor. An original tall deck distributor may work, but not a distributor for a standard deck height block.

EDB

 

Edelbrock C454 intake.

 

interesting...I thought the tall deck engines came with an intake with a recessed distributor hole in them, so they used a normal distributor. But when you use spacer plates and a short deck intake, then you need a longer distributor.