123 distributor cosmetics question

[AlfaBMWGuy]

So I have a nicely working 123 bluetooth distributor in my '74 tii after some hand wringing with my original coil wires being reversed when I bought the car (I much appreciate the help offered me here in my long thread on that from a couple weeks ago).  But, now that I have it functional, I'd like to have it look nice regarding hiding the 123 wires to the extent possible.  As it is oriented now the wires from the 123 stick out directly towards the nose of the car, 180 degrees out from where I'd like them--it shouts "I'm an aftermarket distributor with these extra wires to clutter your otherwise stock classic BMW engine bay!"

 

Am I stuck with this because that's where the green LED came on when cylinder #1 was at TDC when I was installing the distributor?  Or, can I start over with the cylinder #1 TDC install of the distributor and find a better orientation for hiding the wires?  Or, would that also require that the guts inside the the 123 distributor also somehow be rotated and perhaps those are fixed in place from the factory?

 

Thanks in advance for any help (little ignition pun there).

 

-Gary

[Jimmy]

The distributor doesn't care which direction it's installed in the car. Remove it, rotate the entire distributor, and replace it. This is common practice to correctly orient the vacuum canister on distributors once the car is running and tuned.

[AlfaBMWGuy]

So the only "trick" is that you can't just rotate it with the distributor gear at the bottom engaged, you have to disengage the gear, then turn it, and then "stab" (the word I have seen some use here) it back in at the new orientation?

[Jimmy]

Right. If you mark the alignment of the rotor/shaft with the body of the distributor before you loosen anything up you should be able to completely remove it, reclock it, reinstall it, verify alignment, and start it and fine tune the timing. It's really no big deal. 

[AlfaBMWGuy]

OK, thanks for the guidance and encouragement @Jimmy.  Certainly I expect some fine tuning to be part of the process since I already had to do that after the initial "green LED" orientation.

[Jimmy]

The green LED game was bull**** on mine, after a couple attempts at trying to replicate what they described I finally disregarded the setup instructions and used logic instead, which I should have done in the first place. 

[AlfaBMWGuy]

I found there was a huge range where the LED was litup--about 45 degrees.  It lit up just before moving out of one of the slots in the aluminum cover over top of the light and electronics, then it must have been lit up for the entire time it was under the aluminum cover because it was still lit when I rotated it into the next slot!  So I just kind of put it at the half-way point for locking down the distributor orientation and that was good enough to start the car (once I got the other coil wires swapped) and tweak it from there.  I think that because they have those big slots in the aluminum cover where you can see the LED and then just as much area that is completely covered by the aluminum, that does say doing precision alignment is a crock.

 

-Gary

Edited September 30, 2021 by AlfaBMWGuy

[Stevenc22]

^ Technically you are supposed to rotate it until the green light just comes on and stop. Your timing might be off. Check with a timing light.

 

Also i put heat shrink over the wires to make them black and blend into the background visually.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Stevenc22

[Solarphil]

Similar to Stevenc22, but I used black friction tape to make the wires look like all the other wires in the harness

[fsf517]

here is a pic of my set up. I'm not really an expert, I did the best I could. The wires do stick out sort of,  but the car does run better with a bit more power, and less pinging.  I guess the hockey tape would look a bit more original and if the orientation was reversed, even better.  In any case Gary a good upgrade. 

Fred