had a guy ask me what dist gear to use on his 8620 steel roller cam.he read that a steel gear must be used with a steel core .their is a lot of confusion on the subject so i will try to shed some lite on it.if the steel cam has a steel gear a bronze/mag gear is used.most 8620 core cams of today have a iron dist gear pressed on to the steel core [crane for sure does this].if your cam has the pressed on iron gear you have two choices on dist gear,melonized at around 75 bucks or composit at a little over 100 bucks.i have been using the melonized with excellent results.i think some more confusion comes from someone saying steel gear for steel core,their is some truth to that,the steel gear must be melonized .i am not going to discuss cast iron camshaft,s because flat tappet cast cams are a thing of the past and a cast iron roller cam does not belong in a performance boat engine imo.i hope this helps guys changing cam,s .

We see zero wear using the composite distributor gear. Rebuilt the engines after 90 hrs and didn't change the distributor gears.

X2 and if you are running a mechanical fuel pump that has a lot of spring pressure the composite push rods work very well also.

whats a distributor you guys talk of.coils on and efi baby.....

Unless dry sumped or external oil pump with your crank trigger set up, An oil pump drive will still have gears.

If you stick with the bronze gears,Howard's Cams gear lasted much much better for me than Mallory,Crane,Comp,summit....Can go two seasons without hardly any wear vs barely a season with their competitors.

The bronze gears start wearing immediately. Why accept any distributor wear metal in the oil when the composite gears eliminate the ongoing wear you get with bronze?

The more I think about this, we are using a external wet sump oil pump. So we really don't have experience with a composite distributor gear that is driving a standard wet sump oil pump.

What gear is on a standard mercury TB?