Had my distributor out & noticed the gear is about 80% gone in about 100hrs! I had another gear that seems to be the same style that originally came w/ the distributor when I ran the stock flat tappet cam. This new worn gear should be the harden style for the roller cam. How can you tell the difference between the hardened vs. non-hardened style, there is no stamped part #. Other than assuming this was not a hardened gear to begin with, could anything else cause the gear to wear like this?

usually the soft gear is bronze and the hars gear is steel,,check with the cam mfr and see what cam you have and ask them which gear to use...what t block do you have? you may also have some cam walk that is causing the problem..another thing to check is the distributor,,is it a adjustable collered msd ? if its not set rite it will ware the gear..

A buddy just figured out the cause of the same problem....he needed to put a spacer under the distributor, the gear was a little too low

How did he determine the correct depth to shim the distributor?

I went by a dealer @ lunch & they said it looked like a cast non hardened version. They didn’t have the correct gear in stock so I need to go to another dealer after work to compare.

Do you have a billit roller cam? hyd,,solid ?certain cams use certain distributor gears.

GM 454HO hyd roller cam

Three different dealers & three different answers?

The menlonized gear for all crate motors looks the same as the damaged one but also looks to be the same finish as the original flat tappet style. There doesn’t appear to be any visual difference between the two.

The 96-99 7.4l w/ the roller cam has a different finish & smaller diameter shaft bore so its ruled out.

The only thing to try is replace it w/ the melonized crate motor gear & periodically check it? Any way to check or rule out cam walk w/o removing the timing cover?

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c3-t...utor-gear.html

I would also be concerened where it went

There was a thread on the same subject in the last two weeks, do a search and I bet you find it.

I have billet cam's in my 502's and I am going to run the new composite gear(apparently designed for billet cam shafts). Hold on to your socks though, $100 per gear! You can buy them from summitracing.com

WOW, I'll have to check these out. Probably a good investment though. I am facing the same concerns for my new custom Comp grinds (hyd. roller). I was kind of wondering what most were running now also.

I was planning on using the std. ones that came on the TB distributors. I've never had one go bad. I never used anything but. Then again there is something new and knowledge to be gained every day.