The gear material on the cam gear determines the gear material needed for the distributor gear. Crane cams used a pressed on steel gear and you could run the stock distributor gears.

time to pull the engine down, the cam you have takes a std iron gear, so something is wrong, but all that metal is now embedded in the bearings thru-out the engine, keep running it...well the pin has been removed....Rob

Another cause could also be a leaky intake gasket....I had a gear wear out becuase of water dripping down the dist. hole under the intake in the valley.

There's a website called Pace Performance Parts- they have the hardened gear to use with a billet cam for $40.00. The Merc Dist. is a .491" diameter shaft.

I realized it never had a cam retainer installed when it was switched over to the roller cam so cam walk is what was tearing up the gear. I put a bronze gear in & now wonder if thats ok or if I should switch it back out for a composite or another harden gear?

I used to run bronze gears on my drag motors before the gear improvements avail. now. the problem is they wear rather fast and leave trace metal in the oil. you will see a gold sheen when changing oil always been scary to me!

The bronze gear will wear out pretty fast on a pressed on steel cam gear. I would change it.

This is what you need

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...%3AMESELX%3AIT