Distributor Hold Down

If you've ever tried to put a distributor in a Chevrolet 350, you know how difficult that distributor hold down bolt can be. This one, this particular one, because there's nothing in the way, wouldn't be so bad, but if you've ever done it on a newer style, it's very, very difficult to get that bolt in place or loosened up to reset the timing. That's where a distributor wrench comes into play. It's specially designed. This particular kit had two different sizes, half inch and 9/16.

It's got a 3/8 inch drive, so you put a ratchet on when you get ready to snug that thing down completely. So what we'll do, is I'll just show you how this thing works. Pretty self-explanatory but now newer style vehicles, there's just a ton of stuff here in the way. There's hoses, there's wires, there's vacuum lines, there's all kinds of stuff, right in your way. You can see the bolt but there's no way to get an actual wrench in there to get it.

So we're going to take a distributor wrench and it just fits right down underneath the distributor, goes on the bolt, and then take your ratchet, lock it into that square drive, and you can tighten it, loosen it, whatever you need to do. Whatever point you're at in timing this vehicle. You want this one, we're not going to snug it down to tight 'cause we still do need to do the timing but we'll come back later and we'll actually use this thing down to tighten it down completely. So the next time you're working on at least a Chevrolet 350, where it's very very difficult to get at that distributor hold down bolt, a universal distributor wrench is a good tool to have in your toolbox.