302 GMC diesel?

Just another junkyard oddity I saw. Once again in the local junkyard an old deuce'anda'half showed up. Once again, it had a GMC 302 six in it. This one was wierd though. Instead of plugs/wires, it had braided cables, with ends that seemed to thread right into the head. Instead of a distributer, it had a large silver ***embly that the hoses went into, and it had other steel lines going into it. NO wires going to it, or coil. The "carb" had all kinds of hard lines going into it, but no choke, and the air intake was hard plumbed into the snorkle. It also had a diesel style air compressor on it. WTF was this thing?

 

is it possible that the engine is set up to be water proof?

 

I was thinking that, but the whole ignition setup confused me. I thought maybe the diesel injection pump was where the distributer was.

 

I used to drive a USMC duece and a half that had the Reo engine, and it had all the various wiring inside tubes & such. The whole rig was water proof stem to stern. The air intake was way up high on a snorkel, and the exhust was about 5' off the ground with a flange there where an additional extension could be bolted, IIRC this ext. was bolted on the truck elswhere for storage till needed.
With all this gear the truck could be driven underwater higher thsn the driver's head if he had scuba gear!
Dave

 

It may have been a multi-fuel engine too , set up to run whatever fuel was available

 

did it look like this ?

 

Yeah,it's a military sealed ignition gas engine like mentioned above.The compressor is for air brakes or air over hydraulic as used by the military in 2-1/2 tons.

 

I was a MoPool mechanic in '61-62. The ignition wires are shelided and the distributer is sealed. An interesting thing was that the GMC and Reo distributers looked to be the same and fit fine. But turned the opposit direction. I once put a Reo distributer in a GMC. Started great but the retard as the RPM built up killed the top end. Multi fuel engines came along some time after I got out.