This is REAL good advice. You should take it seriously.

There is of course always the school of hard knocks. You graduate with essentially the same knowledge. It just costs more and hurts more.

All that remains for you to do now is chose your path.

Choose wisely, it profoundly affects what happens next ...


Ed

Hauss,

I too am in sort of the same situation as you.
408W with unknown internals.

While I was changing the intake I found I had a solid roller lifters, pointing to a Billet steel cam.

While experimenting with EFI awhile back (which I ditched) I came across a Timing hunting issue and discovered a lot of backlash in the Distributor rotor. Pulling the Dizzy I found a severely worn (knife edged) Bronze gear.

I didn't feel like pulling the water pump, Pulleys, Balancer, timing cover and timing gears to get the Part number off the cam though.

I contacted Comp Cams and Crower on alternatives to Bronze, such as Melonized Steel, or Composite. Both Tech lines recommended Bronze or Composite as the Cam was already broken in and could cause issues using the Hardened (Melonized)steel dizzy gear.

So I made the choice to stick with What I had. Figuring with Bronze if it made through the oil filter it's mucho better than steel.

My eventual goal is to swap out the Solid roller for a Hyd roller. Pricey though as I'll have to change Cam, lifters, springs, Pushrods.

Contrary to to some of the posts in the thread, there really aren't squirrels scrapping the bottom of the oil pan slinging Oil and Metal all over the engine.
The oil pump does suck from the bottom of the pan and goes directly into the filter. I actually feel a lot more comfortable having my Bronze Gear being chewed away VS my expensive Billet Cam sending steel to the bottom of the oil pan.

I feel you've been Dog-piled with quite a few Non-helpful responses in your request for information which is unfortunate. I do feel Blykins and Gaz64 knowledge can be trusted as they are professionals in their field having "been there 1st hand" & not amateurs.

https://www.onedirt.com/tech/engine/...compatibility/

I too respect the people you are talking about and also, believe in what they say.Sometimes they get a little crabby but, that is ok because they think I am not listening to them.I am pretty sure at some point, I will get tired of changing out that bronze gear and get the melonized one.For right now though I will stay with the bronze.

Here's a good explanation of how a bypass valve works - to allow oil to flow to the engine when oil is too cold to provide adequate flow through the filter, or when it's plugged up.

Under normal operating conditions, the by-pass valve will not be open. When the by-pass valve does open, the oil flows directly to the engine to prevent oil starvation and damage to the engine components. Each by-pass valve is set to open at a predetermined pressure differential.


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I brought this up earlier, and it is the practical fact that you can only replace the gear once. This is because you have to drill a new roll pin hole when installing a new gear. Like Brent said, it is nearly impossible to line up the hole in the the new gear with the existing hole in the shaft. Even if you could, that does not guarantee that the gear positioning will be correct.

Wolf,

I did have a time aligning the gear on the shaft. Depth was not an issue. Clocking was though.
Took me 3 tries to get it right.
I also should add I heated the Gear up on a hot plate. Becomes close to a slip fit.
On what was the input side on the the center shaft (where the roll pin would enter 1st) I lightly chamfered the hole with a suicide countersink.
Gear positioning when done was perfect.

After I wrote that, I wondered about what if you heat the gear prior to installing. You would have to act fast with the installation and have an alignment drift ready. Also, you would have to use the same gear from the same manufacturer to ensure the hole in the gear is located in the same exact place as the hole in the old gear.
As we know, distributor gear depth is critical on Fords. I recently diagnosed a customer's ignition issue due to worn distributor gear. Gear had been replaced prior and not installed deep enough on the shaft by .050". Well sure enough, his bearing pad in the block was ground down by the same amount. Metal shavings throughout engine, although his gear was iron.

Comp Cams did say to use a bronze gear with my camshaft. It is in a Boss 429 block and we drilled a tiny hole in one of the oil galley plugs then indexed it to squirt directly onto the dist and cam gear.
I still check on it though.

They are going to tell you to use bronze because they only sell bronze and polymer gears.

Don’t get me wrong, I love their products and they grind 100% of my cams but this advice is not correct, at least not on Ford products.

Did you apply white grease or gear paint and check the pattern?

No, since my diagnoses came after the damage was done. All I could do was install a new gear in the correct location and recommend his block be repaired.

On a Ford, it is the bearing pad in the block that locates the distributor gear for correct mesh. But you have to install the gear on the distributor to the correct tolerances given by Ford, so that the gear actually contacts the pad in the block.

If you set the gear too deep on the distributor shaft, then the downward thrust of the gear is absorbed by the small bearing in the distributor. This will shorten life of distributor. Also gear mesh will not be correct.

If you set the gear too shallow on the distributor shaft, then when the distributor housing is tighten via the clamp, this will jam the gear hard into the pad in the block and severe wear will result in short order.

On a msd dizzy, you can adjust the collar, that sits on top of block and set to recommendations. Then check the pattern that is what I was talking about.

That is the beauty of an adjustable collar, if you have one.

And mesh pattern checking is a good habit to be in, not many would do this.

Gary

Adjustable collars are only for GM distributors.

^ Yes, in a GM, the axial thrust from the distributor gear is upward, the bottom of the distributor housing absorbs the gear thrust. Therefore, in a GM it is the depth of the distributor into the block that creates the correct gear mesh. Because GM distributors sit on top of the intake manifold, an adjustable collar is a good idea to compensate for decking of the block, milling of the heads, etc.

In our Fords, the distributor height is not effected by any block decking or cylinder head milling.

Get it close as you can then ,retime with light. Really not that big of deal provided,you have a timing light and remember your original settings.;)

No new holes on my msd not sure what you are using just new roll pin. change gear as many times as you want.

No new holes on my msd not sure what you are using just new roll pin. change gear as many times as you want.

I had the same issue back in 2016. -9 billet steel core comp cam solid roller with an MSD distributor and bronze gear. Running a 460BB. My car just randomly quit running and I found the bronze gear wore away. I called Comp Cams and they told me to use a bronze gear but it would only be good for about 2500 miles as a wear part. Blykins told me to install a crane 5971 coated steel gear for my application so I went with that. I've got about 8K miles on it and both the the cam gear and distributor gear look perfect. I've checked the wear 3 times in that 8K miles just to be sure and I'm totally confident in it at this point.