Ok, I will try and turn the crank a touch. Thanks for that tip.
Most of the time, the problem (as they've said) is the oil pump shaft not aligning with the opening in the bottom of the dizzy shaft, but the shaft can't turn any farther due to the gear mesh with the cam. That's why turning the crank will let it seat that last bit.
Most of the time.
Funny thing is the tool that Shamu lent me to prime the pump sat right in with no problems.
That's because the oil primer does not have the cam gear attached to get in the way. All you have to do with a primer is line up the shafts. No gears to get in the way.
I don't know if its the same but my buddies ford 400 would have the same issue droping the dist. Always about an 1/8" wouldn't seat. So we would have to get a long 5/16th nut driver to line up the oil pump shaft with the dist. Then it would drop every time.
It's exactly the same. While old GM vehicles used a "blade" design (like a screwdriver blade) to drive the pump, our Fords use a hex shaped shaft. It can look real close, but is not quite right on the money. The GM blade-style has a very large curve and bevel to it's edges, so that a slight misalignment will usually result in the two shafts self-aligning and dropping right in. If they don't, you're simply too far out of align and can slightly turn the pump shaft to get it closer. With them, close is sometimes good enough. With the Ford, you've got to be almost right on the money or it won't go in.
What you were doing with turning the shaft by hand, is the same thing as turning the crank with a wrench. So instead of the distributor being turned to align with the pump shaft, you guys were turning the pump shaft to align with the distributor.
Now, on to the potential bad news Izzy. Some of us here (including me) have run into a snag with the pump shaft being held up too high in the bore by the retaining clip/ring thing. Or, since that clip really isn't supposed to hold it up, maybe the shaft was hung up or too long or something.. We measured thirteen different ways, and determined that the only thing that was going to let the distributor seat that last 1/16" was to push the shaft farther down.
With a socket and extension then, we gave it a couple of light smacks with a hammer, and we got that last little bit.
(edit: Now that I think about it, I'm going to have to talk to my friend who's engine it was and make sure we didn't have to pull the shaft. Pretty sure we didn't though. I'd remember having to do that!)
There were a few discussions about that a few years ago here, if I remember, but I ran into this last year when putting a new/rebuilt Mustang TFI setup into an '86 or '89 (don't remember which) engine block that had been rebuilt and running before, by the PO of the engine.
So if twisting the engine or lining up the pump shaft don't do it Izzy, take a couple of quick measurements of the height of the shaft above the base block casting, and the depth of the hole in the distributor shaft, so you can be sure you're not just running out of room on the shaft.
Good luck.
Paul
