I have a 509 built by Dustin Whipple with less than 5 hours including dyno time. It started acting out of time less than 2 hours after it was installed in a brand new Lavey and got progressively worse. After many hours of looking it was found to have cam teeth broken thus telling the distributor stupid timing events. Everything was new. It being fixed now. I don't want to do this again. Any idea why this happened?

What cam gear ? what distributor gear ? any break in lube on the gears for start up ? was the oil pumped up before start up ?

The teeth on the rear of the cam that drives the distriubtor broke. Yes, during the build things were properly lubed. The engine oil was primed prior to starting.

Was it a roller or flat tappet cam ? I don't know if this could be the problem, you may already know this, a billet roller gear will eat a cast distributor gear. If the distributor isn't set right in the motor you can lose the gears. Good luck.

This mismatch usually results in the distributor failing and timing being variable +or - until complete failure

- not the gears on the cam themselves failing.

Maybe a bad heat treatment on the cam itself ?

UD

Im thinking either bad treating on the gear, or sometimes when the metals on the cam gear and distributor gear are not compatible metal... this sort of thing can happen.

Chris