swappin parts

so one of my fellow vanner friends out in Ohio, Mike Nemec, had his old distributor still sitting on a shelf (he put a v8 in his astro) and sent it out my way via another friend in exchange for a cigar the next time I see him.

There are 2 screens in the bottom of the OEM distributor that are supposed to be vents, and apparently GM found they didn't work so well, and issued a tech bulletin to punch them out for proper air flow and drainage of moisture.

I popped those out on the "new" one.

Today was my day for swapping it out, never done one before, and much to my surprise, it was simple and easy. 5 minutes, done.  I had a couple of the wires backwards at first, and once I got them sorted out, the van ran fine.

I also put a new MSD cap and rotor on it, as well as replacing my coil (older MSD for new style MSD)

(yes, I realize a wire is missing, see below)

I noticed that the post for the #2 wire on the old cap was discolored,

so I looked inside the boot and it was all corroded, and when I went to check the other end on the plug, I discovered why....

so now I need to order a new set of wires.. and I have headers, so I can't just use any "direct fit" set off the shelf.  my current wire set is 4 moroso and 2 accel wires, so now I am looking for new wires, might get another moroso set, so they are all the same.

UPDATE 7/10/2014

I haven't had any issues since doing all this when driving in the rain, but I also haven't had to drive in any tsunamis like the one that caused this...  so I came up with an easy fix in just in case.

12"x24" magnetic sign, primered to match the hood.

Almost can't see it.