regalman4925

i am getting the last few parts ordered for my 454 and since i am running a roller cam i need to figure out which cam gear i need to order to work with my 1989 thunderbolt distributor? i keep seeing them on ebay but i have a feeling allot of those are cheapies. thanks!

1BIGJIM

iTrader: (1)

It depends on what cam you bought.

RMBUILDER does mine, I never had to change the gears.

regalman4925

i am running a crane 731 roller cam

Griff

You can run the stock TB IV distributor gear. The 731 has a pressed on steel gear and does not require a special distributor gear. I ran my stock merc dist gear on my 731 cam with no issues.

regalman4925

i think they made 2 different versions of the cam, a black one and a bronze one? i have the bronze colored one....

Griff

The bronze is the better one and the same one that I had.

MER Performance

If you are running a billet cam you can option for a 2 piece cam with a cast gear to match your distributor gear, if it's a billet one piece use to composite gear for the distributor. Just measure the shaft, I believe it's, .485" I know a MSD is .500. The composite gears work great! Howards cams has one that I have used in the past. You'll think it's plastic when you get it. There is no reason to run a bronze dist. gear unless it's a dry-sump and it's just turning the dist. Hope this helps.

regalman4925

so griff you used the bronze cam and a stock distributor gear from a non roller cam block? the engine that came out of my boat was a 89 454, if you had a newer motor it may have already had a bronze gear on it?