When I went roller cam, I replaced the distributor gear with a hardened one from TA Performance. I've had the distributor out several times now and everything looks great. looking at the TA catalog, they only make the 455 hardened gears. Don't see one for the 350, so I guess you'll need a bronze gear.
I'll have to see what MSD offers for 350 dist. Well I'm done for today. Had enough fun playing in the oil & antifreeze. Couple more pics of my custom fabbed up cam button & bumper....and the last pic you'll see of the T/A Stage 1 intake!
So Larry, Is the bronze more wear resistant and less brittle than the stock steel gear? I'm getting tired of chasing shavings of any kind in my engine. And what is the 350 cam gear spacer? Seems if you ran an electric fuel pump, you could just use the original eccentric as a spacer?
No, the bronze gear is softer, so it sacrifices itself. Guys with the HV/HP pumps used to run them back in the day on the 455's. Downside is you have to periodically inspect/replace them. Give MikeT a call and ask if he can get a hardened 350 gear for the MSD distributor. Worth a shot? Yeah with the spacer. Waste of money.
Sounds good. The cam gear needs replacing also. The chipped tooth it has and some advanced wear on teeth sides has to go. Pulled intake, first look is good! Cam & lifters show no abnormal wear! Runout will get inspected soon.
Lot of good info here.... http://www.onedirt.com/news/its-all...fusion-out-of-distributor-gear-compatibility/
Larry, he's running a factory cam gear and a factory style distributer gear. You don't need any special distributer gear because the roller does not use a special steel cam gear. That is why TA doesn't list a gear that is compatible with billet. Mart, does the cam gear have as many badly worn teeth as the distributer teeth? In my experience with worn 455 gears the cam will pretty much be as bad as the distributer gear and all the way around although the wear may vary slightly. Yours wearing to one side of the dist gear looks like the run out of something is causing you to have problems so you seem to be on the right track by checking that. Something is not right there and the bronze gear may be the only way to check if you've found a solution because it will wear fast if there is still a problem and you can put some miles on it and if it doesn't wear fast you can always swap in a standard gear. Too bad BOP Engineering doesn't make a composite gear for the 350. I've used that gear on regular cams and the current roller in my 455. Seems to be working good but it will always wear before the cam gear which in a 455 is a disaster. Coming off the trailer the cold startup and not too thorough warm up makes me nervous. At least you can change the cam gear. BOP makes a V6 gear but it fits a .500" shaft. It appears the V6 and 350 use the same number of teeth. The shaft on your MSD may be the large .500" so it may work. Not cheap but you can forget about wear on the cam gear. It also would only be a temporary solution if the cam gear mounting or whatever is still off but you don't have to worry about micro sized plastic particles in the oil.
Mike, There a 1/4" chipped tooth spot on only one cam gear tooth, some additional slight wear on rest of gear teeth, but not severe like the distributor gear. Seems like those stock 350 cam gears are hardened. I will pull the cam gear off and check teeth out closer under a magnifying light! If it's worn more so on one half or side, then my runout idea may be valid. I'm getting a little worn out on one side too, bending over the grill and fenders!!! I will have to check into those hardened V6 gears. Thanks! Yes, my MSD dist. gear i.d. is .500
One second thought..... if those elusive aluminum heads were out, I'd just yank the whole shebang out and start over! You know when I decided to fire it up friday, it was about 50 degrees out. I let it warm up for abt 8-10 minutes, drove thru subdivision streets before even getting out on main roads. I worry about extra drag and cold startup also. The damage (wear) may have been there already, except for the bare (missing) tooth area on dist gear now.
Wow Mart that sucks! I was going to ask if your running an aftermarket cover but I see you have a good GM cover. My TA cover I believe has an issue with distributor hole alignment to oil pump shaft. As I was mocking it up awhile back (before #3 bearing spun) I felt slight resistance in turning the rotor when engaged to the oil pump, every 180 deg. Everything turns fine by itself, but when mated together I get slight binding. TA says no big deal, but I'm concerned. I have a feeling were going to have some obstacles in 350 land with this new stuff... roller cams, aluminum heads, SP3.
Mart, IMHO, the gear material is not at fault here, they're both iron, compatible with each other, same gears and material used on our (350 guys) flat tappet cams, hell, we transfer 'em over to the roller cam...... sorry big block guys I believe your wear issue lies elsewhere, alignment of something is outta whack.
Mark, believe me, I'm checking it out closely. Here are cam gear pics, 180* apart. You can see heavier wear on one (chipped tooth) side. The shiny o.d. of gear teeth I believe was caused by the sheared distributor gear teeth polishing the o.d. The distributor & cam gear teeth were not bottoming out on each other either.
I know I read somewhere that someone had a problem with the timing cover causing a misalignment issue with the distributor. That doesn’t seem likely though in your case. I found it. This is what I was thinking about, http://www.v8buick.com/index.php?threads/distributor-wear.254450/ No resolution in the above thread. I have to ask Steve what happened.
MAYBE, try removing the dowel pins and then insert balancer and distributor, that's how you do LS engines, maybe the dowels are causing something,...Just a thought
