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I plan to remove the pan this winter and wanted to make a correction to my distributor position on my 901. I believe if I remove the oil pump and rotate the gears clockwise a couple of cogs that my distributor will move to the proper position with the label pointing at the 6 o clock position rather than the 4 o clock position it now resides in. The car runs great so I cannot be far off the proper degrees before TDC but as you can see by the attached photo the locking pin on the distributor is just about touching #4 spark plug and if needed I cannot rotate the distributor counter clockwise any further. I have seen multiple engine photos with both the 6 o clock position as well as the 4 o clock position shown but I think they should all be in the 6 o clock position.

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Not sure about 9th Series but in the 11th series the grease cup faces forward (90 degrees CCW from where yours is shown). Assuming that's correct for 1932 why remove and reposition the oil pump, can't you just remove the distributor from the head and rotate the distributor drive shaft 90 degrees (it's square-ended, isn't it?) and then reposition the wires in the cap accordingly.

Cosmetics of the engine are very nice, but the spark plug knurled thumb screws should be nickel-plated, not brass. They are readily available, someone else will recall the sources.

Yea I tried that already it only moves the lock closer to #5 plug. It really needs 45 degrees to reposition to the proper location. I believe the square drive shaft needs to move half of the square. I know the knurled nuts are not correct but I want to use the nickel ones that Bruce Blevins sells but they are a larger dia. and will not fit present clearance so I need to move the distributor in order to use those. I have not removed the oil pump before so not sure what I am getting into to do this. Hoping that someone else agrees that turning the gears a couple of cogs clockwise will do the trick.

Not going to work. The oil pump gear is supposed to be timed before the block is installed. There are marks on the cam and the drive gear that need to be matched. It is dropped into place with the block off the crankcase. If you have the valve cover off, you will notice a locator tab for the gear housing that goes into a slot in the block.

Attached is a picture of what was a nice original 902 before this wack job left it outside to rot in Pennsylvania. It shows the correct position of the distributor.

What to do in the case where they put the motor together without timing those gears? If you can't get timing correct and don't want to pull the motor apart you can put the distributor shaft in a vise and very carefully give it a twist, but document the part thoroughly before you do that so that it can be returned to original.

This method does not work very well on the North East twin coil system which is not fault tolerant, but works on the earlier cars.

If you do decide to take the motor apart the housing is best removed by carefully driving the gear and housing upward from the bottom using a brass punch.

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Thanks much for the info Tim, but I am not going to go pull that cylinder block again. This car runs way to good to do that now. Just wondering how it got in this position in the first place. Attached photo of other 32 engine showing the distributor label at the 6 o'clock position so assumed it was correct. I want to do a major tune up and just thought I could correct this but I can live with it as it is.

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