Best Head Gasket for my 427 SO

[patrickt]

Usually, when you think of FEs, that have been running ok for a while, and then start bending push rods, you think of stuck valves, or something obvious breaking on the valve train, springs binding up, or a really unusual misfire. But you had it all apart, and then put it back together, and ate a tooth on the distributor gear and bent two rods. I don't know. Maybe the distributor gear caused a funky misfire that created too much pressure for the push rods to go up against. Surely if there was obvious binding/rubbing/etc., or the lash was way out of line, you would have seen that. But that wouldn't eat the distributor gear....

[Gaz64]

On any pushrod engine suffering from bent pushrods, the usual culprits are insufficient valve retainer to guide/seal clearance or rocker to stud clearance.
Something in the valvetrain is not correct.

The distributor drive gear is too high in relation to the cam drive gear, either fitted too high on the shaft, as observed by the new hole in the driven gear, or gasket too thick.

The wear pattern and resultant gear tooth failure shows this.

Gary