On my 81 GL d/r, I have a strange bearing noise on cold start up. It's a high-pitched squeal, and the tach jumps all over the place while it happens. I'm thinking it's the distibutor, but I haven't been able to isolate it. Has anybody had similar problems? Along the same track, if it is the distributor, I still have the one off my 82 DL 2wd wagon, is that distributor a drop-in, or will I need to re-wire things?

It sounds like you have a distributor busing going bad; take the cap and rotor off then try moving the shaft forward, backwards, left and right. There should be a very minimal about of movement.

 

The distributor for an 81 4wd would be the early style Hitachi if I remember right. An 82 2wd would have a Nippondenso distributor. If you had the later style Hitachi in the 4wd, this would be a straight swap but for some reason I think the early style Hitachi is a little different and it would require connecting or disconnecting something else to make it work.

The resistance of the elec. ign. module in the disty must match the resistance of the coil or you risk one of the two being damaged. Just keep that in mind with any disty swap. Try the later one and see what happens. Should just be the same two wires hooked to the coil I think.

So if I swap both out together it should be ok then? I still have the later coil.