The easy way to center the magnet and pickup coil in an HEI distributor.

When it's time to replace the pickup coil and magnet in your HEI distributor, one of the things that must be done is to center the magnet tips so that the points on the rotor do not interfere with them.

The clearances are tight and most new pickups will not align perfectly out of the box.

it's easy to adjust by shifting the position of the magnet before you tighten it down, but how far and in which direction?

This short video shows you how to do that with nothing more than a felt tip marker!

Just mark the tips of the magnet with a sharpie or other permanent marker, slide the rotor on and spin it.

if there is interference, you will see the marks on the magnet tips which tells you which direction to shift the magnet...

Once you find the sweet spot, tighten the screws 1/4 turn at a time, checking clearance each time until it's as tight as you need it to be (rber, theagnet is a plastic composite so you don't want to crush it by tightening too much.)