Quote:
Originally Posted by RodKnock
Here's a dumb somewhat related question. Won't the bronze distributor gear for roller cams wear out and potentially ruin any block, if not checked? Not that replacing a bronze distributor gear is surgery for an aluminum FE, but it would seem that a failure could ultimately reduce the chance of a "high mileage" aluminum FE.
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Bronze gears are "self-sacrificing" with your roller cam. They need to be changed out every so often, but that's not a big deal. I'm pretty sure most of the builders switched over to the Poly-Composite Gears years ago, which last much longer. If you have a PC gear in your FE, it will probably last the life of your car while you are driving it. Now, that's not true for Rick Lake, but I think it would be for you. But marking and pulling the distributor and eyeballing the gear next to a brand new one that you have in your hand is not a difficult job. It's just one bolt, and less than a half-hour total. If you do have to actually replace the gear have your machine shop do it for you. As I recall, you have the MSD billet distributor and I'm pretty sure that MSD puts an extra-fat pin in there as well. If I'm wrong on that, I'm sure I'll get corrected....
EDIT -- And "No," a stripped gear, or broken pin, doesn't usually result in the engine getting ruined. The engine stops and your natural instinct is to throw in the clutch and coast over. There is usually no damage.