dist. gear wear wore one off and started on second one after 2 nights.

I have a engine I am helping a guy with that is wearing off the dist. teeth 360 small block, aluminium intake, $300.00 dollar camshaft non roller, after market dist. no bronze gear, I measured dist. length and found it to be .124" longer from dist. mounting surface to top of drive gear on dist. shaft than two others that I had at shop. I checked for a hard to turn oil pump it turned freely, it is a high volume pump with the heavy spring left in it. Not to my liking, it carries 75+ psi with 20w50 switching to 10w30 tonight. I also know that with dist. installed you can still move dist. shaft up and down so it is not to tight. Anybody have any ideas

Might get better responses if you posted in a forum other than the Crate Late Models forum.

First off you paid too much for a flat tappet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by perfconn

First off you paid too much for a flat tappet cam.Second,not enough timing will cause very high exhaust temperatures.

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Where is the question about timing??

I would pull the dist and check the cam gear carefully.
Next I would check if the team is cold reving it.

after you ate the first one chances are the cam is crap

but some reasons for eating the first one would have been----
as Dave said--foot tuning a cold engine
wrong gear to start with ----some gears are not meant for racing period
intake is on crooked
dist shaft is bent
dist depth is wrong
cam is walking
**cam is worn**(it is now for sure)

Brad

Heavy wt oil, cold revving, hv/hp oil pump, all probable causes, make sure dist still has end play when installed and tightened, if not add shims,suspension king pin shims work well for this.
I agree the cam is more than likely damaged @ the gear and usually the closest lobe/s.
The metal is in the motor, so a complete dis assembly/cleaning is warranted here to prevent repeat failures.

I looked up at cam gear and it looks fine. I kind of believe that it could be soft gears because the dist. I was comparing it to has only been in a gm sealed crate with 5w40syn and it shows same wear but has many many more nights on it. I just got done replacing with a new genuine gm gear that I ordered. Hardness checked at Eaton corp. and it is a lot harder. Now I hope it don't ruin cam. I will keep you updated if it fixes it. perfconn if you read my other post about 602 beating 604 you will realize that I am truley helping a friend and there is no way I would spend that much on a cam. All that info is true. Special thanks to Brad for returning my pm about this also. He seams to be very honest and willing to help anyone, never says he knows it all but willing to help.