Barry...great! Glad the steel gear worked for you friend...most of the folks who build engines around here would differ unless Mr. Brown has some new fitment...a hardened steel cam gear, but hey...what the he!!. If it's something new...than that's what I'm talking about when I kept referring to the past year or so. I've heard the same thing about the poly gears. But a few thousand miles is a bit shy of reaching a comfort level for me personally...again, test cases are expensive. As for your success with not having the bronze gears go bye-bye, cool. Like I said, my friend had similar success and he was never light on the gas with his FE-ERA. But I dare say, the folks who have had problems do outnumber those who do not. I s'pose someone could just get in the habit of pulling the distributor at each
oil change.
I think the thing about the needle bearings on solids is simply the fact they rely on the splash, versus dedicated oiling/cooling with hydraulic setups. Once folks learn to blip the throttle and keep things wet...it's workable. I never had a problem with that once I understood the need to treat it differently...like I said, most folks like blipping the throttle.
Yup...the Chevy pin is a no-brainer.