1951 Belair: engine planning

One of the first questions was around where the spark plugs go on the Fisher head, and how many plugs are there -- the hot rod distributor from the AMT kit actually has room for two coil wires and 12 plugs, but has no plugs. A quick Google search brought up a discussion on the Scale Auto site, dated November 2006, which I won't repeat -- click here if you want to see it. (Incidentally, if this conversation had actually appeared in print, and if I had paper copies of Scale Auto going back to 2006, I would never have found this interesting little tidbit. Gotta love the search capabilities of the Interweb.) Click here for more info on the Fisher heads where it seems that fewer than 100 heads were actually cast by Fisher and his predecessor. Seems they are quite pricey today.

Anyway rather than horse around trying to fit wires to the styrene distributor, I plan to go back to the approach used in the DBR1, here, and made a distributor for it. As mentioned in that post, this idea came from someone whose name I forget; it turns out that Tim Kriner posted photos here. Thanks, Tim!

Next is the location of the distributor. The AMT kit has it in the same position as stock, driven off the cam, low down on the right side of the block. This is fine in the case of the stock engine as the distributor is on the right and all the manifolding on the left, but the Fisher head has the exhaust on the right. I would not anticipate that a distributor cap located immediately underneath a header would last very long ... I also found photos online (Jalopy Journal apparently but I can't find the photos outside the Google search results) showing a distributor (or maybe a magneto) driven off the front cover.



It also has plugs on the left side, next to the Hilborn injection, not the right side ... maybe it's another 12-port conversion, not a Fisher, although the two-piece valve cover matches other online descriptions of the Fisher cover. This was apparently designed so you could adjust the tappets with the engine running, without oil spilling down the sides of the block and making a mess, by removing only the upper half. Brilliant! I recall using bits of cardboard that would get soaked in oil in a pathetic attempt to keep oil off the exhaust manifold.



In any case that is one cool looking motor. The plan now is to copy it. Stay tuned!