[66Replica]

Well, pulled the distributor today and I finally found what was troubling Lucky. The drive gear was smashed, teeth broken, and crushed in. http://pic1.picturetrail.com:80/VOL128/1315496/2500684/30327708.jpg
You can't really tell by the picture, but those teeth are smashed in.
Do I need to take off the intake manifold and fish the pieces out? Or get a magnet? Any tips? Should I just replace the gear or get a new distributor? Also, what kind of drive gear should go into a roller cam?

Thanks.

 

[1967gtfastback]

Same thing happened to me. Fish what you can with a magnet, put a quart or 2 through the engine and change the oil and filter. It will be fine. What you don't get your oil filter will pick up.

 

[Lemondrop]

Pull the pan if you can get it off easy . If your lucky the camshaft gear is not roasted . A roller cam should use a bronze gear or I believe a billet gear will work also . The bronze gears work fine but wear quicker than a steel version . If your not pushing points around the bronze gear should last a loooooong time . Id pull the pan off if possible to fish the chunks out and clean it all up . The bigger pieces can get into the pickup tueb and might wear your oil pump . You may even consider replacing the oil pump just to be sure (if you have the pan off) . If you don't want to do all that , do like the other poster said and fish out the pieces best you can with a magnet , drain the oil and flush it out as good as you can . You might even consider buying a magnetic drain plug if you don't have one already that will trap the rest of the pieces .

 

[Lightning]

Are you running a hi volume oil pump? Ive seen that numerous times from the added stress it takes to drive the HV pump. I always use Std pumps on fords, if the engines built right theres no need for HV's.

 

[66Replica]

It's only a little larger than stock.

 

[stangfever]

A hydrolic roller cam requires a steel distributor gear .a solid lift roller cam uses a brass gear.

 

[KENK66]

Same thing JUST happened to me. Died on the highway last week, 300 miles after a cam "upgrade". My dist. gear looks a bit worse than yours, and the new cam is missing part of a tooth on the drive gear - so out it comes. A nightmare. Everything except the new cam had 20,000 miles with no problems before the cam change.

What did it? How to be sure it won't happen again? I'd like to hear what you find out.

I measured cam endplay .015" supposed to be .005 - .008
Look at dist. gear bottom for wear from the engine block - it isn't supposed to contact there, but I may have used a thinner manifold gasket then before.
Distributor may have endplay itself. Easy to check, shim it back to spec.

Changing the dist. gear ought to be interesting.

My pan will probably come off, although the oil pump turns freely.
Is it risky to clean it out with a magnet and flushing, without removing the pan?

Let's compare notes. I'm intending to post in a day or so to get more input from the VMF experts so I don't have a repeat of this disaster.