Chrysler Repair: replace distributor?, shutter mechanism, mercury vehicle

Question
HI ROLAND, YOU PREVIOUSLY ANSWERED A ? VERY PROFICIENTLY--THANKS MUCH! NOW NEW ?---90 MITSUBISHI 3.0 ENGINE HAS ICM IN BOTTOM OF DIST., MINE ALSO HAS POWER TRANSISTOR UNIT ADJACENT TO IGNITION COIL. VISIBLY THE DIST. ON 3.O CARAVAN AND MONTERO LOOK IDENTICAL--FOR SAKE OF PRICE/AVAILABILITY COULD I REASONABLY REPLACE DIST. ON 90 MONTERO WITH SAME FROM 3.0 CARAVAN?

Answer
Hi Tommy,
I am getting out my area of expertise pretty rapidly here. The Montero is a Mercury vehicle, correct? Does it also use the Mitsubishi engine? If it did and the drive gear on the base of the distributor were identical, and the distributor cap, and ICM then I would assume that they are interchangable. But you would have to look them over carefully side by side to be sure, particularly the gear that meshes with the intermediate shaft so that you don't grind up something internal to the engine. Also be aware that the distributor cap on the Chrysler 3.0L is a little tricky in that there is some rerouting of the wires between the plug in points and the internal distributor posts so that the wires as they are arranged in the circle around the cap are not identical with the spark firing order. So you don't want to just willy nilly remove the wires and think that if you know where the #1 should go that the arrangement will be -2-3-4-5-6 because they aren't! But if the distributor is made by the same manufacturer and they are both for the 3.0L Mistsubishi and the shutter mechanism inside is identical the they should interchange. But that is a lot of if's.
Roland