260z distributor advance plate breakdown illustration needed

[emptech]

I'm in the process of repairing a 260z distributor and found it was all rusted up,

all stuck together. Now that I got it apart and cleaned up, although I was very

careful on how I laid the parts out, I'm not sure how the parts having to do with

the advance plate mechanism line up. I've had to replace all six ball bearings

and don't see how the plates line up that sandwich the bearings. The factory

manual doesn't show these details.

I found a tutorial on a 280z distributor, but the parts don't match the 260z.

I have a 240z distributor but it's parts don't match either.

Not that it matters, this distributor has two pick-up coils.

Not an emergency, but it is the only thing stopping me from firing this baby up.

Thanks in advance -

Jim

[Zed Head]

Where in the process are you getting stuck? If you have the parts all laid out, there may be a simple step someone would know about. I've dis- an re-assembled a couple myself.

[emptech]

There are two places where three sets of bearings go. The last one is in the spring held by a

clip. It is the location closes to the mounting plate that holds the pickups. There is a plastic

three fingered item that holds the balls. It goes between two metal plates. I'm trying to figure

the orientation of the plastic item and the two metal plates, such that as the advance plate

goes through it's several degrees of motion, the balls stay in constant contact with the plates.

When it came apart, the various plates got rotated. I don't think anything got flipped over.

I'll eventually figure it out. I can't tell by any "tell-tale" marks from where the bearings were

because the surfaces were all rusty, and once I cleaned them with sand paper and scotchbrite,

the marks from the bearings went away.

With time, I'll figure it out, but would be nice to see a blow up.

Jim

[Zed Head]

I think that I ran in to a similar problem. You'll find that there are certain projections on the plastic pieces that stop the rotation of the various plates at certain points. You'll probably have to put it together (and maybe take it apart again) to see how it works. If I remember right, the way the whole thing worked was that one "plane" of bearings rotated a certain amount then the other plane/set took over for more rotation. The thing that I keyed on was that the ball bearings were always sandwiched between two metal wearing surfaces. Also, don't forget, that the amount of rotation is limited in usage by the travel limits of the vacuum advance canister's rod. The most vacuum advance I've seen described is 9 degrees (18 degrees of crankshaft advance) for the Z distributors (not ZX) so it's really not much rotation movement. I felt like I had it right when I could move it that small amount repeatedly back and forth and the ball bearings rode in the same tracks, and the metal wear plates were locked in place.

Best I can do, I've never seen a drawing of the breaker plate taken part. Good luck.