Hey everyone,
I am thinking of putting in an HEI for my 68, but was wondering if I had to watch out for anything in particular? A friend of mine told me that he was concerned that I may throw off the balance of the motor with a new distributor, etc. Any other words of advice? I am pretty new to the whole thing, so I would nt mind if someone said take it to a pro.

Throw off the balance?? :-) No worries other than clearance to the firewall. If it will fit you'll be fine. You want to run it direct power though, not from what used to feed the coil (it uses a resistance wire). You might want to consider other options like pertronix in your existing distributor or a Mallory or many other aftermarket setups.

Throw off the balance
He is most prob refering to the dizzy/vac advance curve
more infoe on this in forums

Thanks for the input. Is the installation pretty straight forward? Would I need to rewire anything?

Thanks for the input. Is the installation pretty straight forward? Would I need to rewire anything?

Yes, you need to run +12 to the HEI from an ignition switched source and use a heavy gauge wire, at least 14. Of course you need to mark the rotor position and the cap orientation before you pull the old one or you'll have to find TDC.

Or trace the resistor wire back to the bulk head on the fire wall and splice a new wire in there. Just get as close to the bulk head as you can to still make a good splice. This will give you the full 12 volts on the proper ignition circut.