I'm working on a 78' 350 chevy. I bought a Mr Gasket mech. advance kit for the springs. When I went to install it my stock plastic bushings on the weights were wore out, so I installed the new weights. This changed the timing to much. It had more power before. I would like to change back to the stock weights, and just play with the springs, but I can't find any bushings. any help?
Any autoparts store should either have the bushings in stock or can get them from the wharehouse in a day or so. You may have to hold the fellas hand ahile he is searching the database. You can also use the after market weights and the stiffest springs in the kit to give yourself minimal advance or play with your initial timming a bit.
You might Check with GMC Bubba on here and see if he has a source. P-N-B I did some checking and it seems that most of the aftermarket plastic bushings don't fit the stock Hei weights. The one source that one site gave came up as a dead end. This is one of those deals that isn't anywhere near as easy as it should be.
You should be able to pic up stock bushings still. Its been a year but I was putting a pickup coild in a laidies HEI and noticed that the bushings were shot on her weights. I dug around in my stuff and didn't have any old ones so I went to The Zone and got some. I had to wait until the following morning to pick them up. Sometimes you have tp be persistent with the parts counter guy. They just let me use the computer when I need something they don't think exists any more. Here is a new little known fact, the autozone computers around here go clear back to the '50s now.
The plastic bushings for the stock weights are available from NAPA . The part number is ECH DP112. The plastic pieces the weights ride on are not available but I found some plastic ****ons that have a stud piece that fit the hole & worked well. I believe I got these ****ons from Micro Plastics in Arkansas a long time ago.
I think availability has a lot to do with location on some of the stuff that we use. I had to send a pilot bushing to my kid in the '90s because they didn't exist according to the parts fella in oregon. I walked into O'Rielly's (they were closest) and told the fella and he went in the back and brought me one. I see a lot of the fellas that cannot find parts for their cars and buy them from specialty dealers that I can walk into the local autoparts and buy.
I'd have to say that is quite often the case. A lot of buyers for stores in certain areas buy and stock what they think will sell or what the company thinks will sell. The local Autozone manager evidently doesn't think that anyone drives anything but front wheel drive cars less then ten years old. The mom and pop store across the street with the stinky cats often has the older parts on the shelf or can have them at noon or six pm most days. We've got an O'Reilly's opening in town where the Napa used to be before the owner's kid ran it into the ground and that should be interesting. Back to the bushings in question. I spent quite a bit of time the other day searching the net for oem style bushings for hei distributors and didn't find any. I found a link on a Camaro site but the link didn't work and was several years old. Bushings for the aftermarket performance weights are all over the place from several brands.
I called NAPA & they show zero stock. None of their Atlanta area stores have any in stock. He said he would call Echlin & see if they have a superseded part number. I checked the O'Reilly Auto website & came up with a part number for Borg Warner item part no.DG13. I called the store & they can have them in a day-price $5.99 for the pair of bushings.
Things are getting interesting out there. My buddy and I joke that us SBC guys are now like the Model T guys used to be looking for parts 30-40 years ago. Our local auto stores don't carry a stock distributor, coil or timing gasket in stock for a SBC ( all parts I needed quickly in the last few weeks) Times, they are a changing.
Never had a set of aftermarket springs and weights work out of the box. Always had to put them on distributor machine and juggle springs. Ago
The weight and pin repair kits are hard to find , i do have a few at the shop. Take your new weights and measure the od of the plastic bushing. It should be 1/4 inch od . You then need to heat the old worn out weights cherry red ( removing the hardness) and drill to 1/4 and use your plastic bushing.. Should work fine , there is two weight pin sizes a big pin and a small pin. Let me know if you cant make this work is can send you the plastic bushings....
That was what i was thinking about doing. Thanks for the tip about heating the weights first. I didn't know that.
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