[Jamo]

Rick Lake and I have explored the cam/distributor gear issue over the past five years ad nauseum on FEs.

Basic Rule: The distributor gear is always supposed to be the sacrificial lamb. It is always supposed to be of the same, or preferably, softer material than the cam...for obvious reasons.

Cam mfgs didn't always make the same stuff available for every application. There is still a bit of an issue with FEs for solid roller cams because they are only recently starting to press on stronger gears onto the cams. Bronze, or the more recent poly gears, were the only things you could use, though there have been a few (very few) stories of folks getting by with steel gears. I have several bronze gears on the shelf behind me as I type that are either broken, worn down or sharpened to where they could cut a gnat's short hairs lengthwise. I always carried a Buckley Emergency Distributor Gear Kit with me consisting of (1) bronze gear pre-drilled for a Chevy-sized pin, (2) a tube of lube (KY or anal lube might suffice) and (1) handy dandy little gear puller. Used it several times, most notably at 8,000 feet in the Sierras. I switched back to a non-roller flat tappet several years ago.

Keith (KC) discovered better luck using hyd rollers for FEs because they could use steel gears, and has been building big HP with them without the distributor gear problems.

Rick's being the good guy running the poly gear so we get some empirical evidence back on its usage.

What gets me about Mike's problem is that Mfgs have been making the stronger pressed-on cam gear setups for SBC, SBF BBC, 429/460s and Mopars for years (FEs being the basturd child left in the cold for a lengthy period), so the distributor gear-cam matchup should have been a no-brainer for Comp Cams. I cannot imagine anyone ever advising a cast iron gear for any kind of roller (just doesn't make sense to me...but hey...if it works), and any steel matchup better be deadon with the materials used for the cam gear...or they should recommend bronze or the new poly.

Mike, there is a thing called res ipsa loquitor that is used in med mal cases when somebody wakes up after an operation and finds out a sponge has been left in their belly. You sue everyone that was in the operating room and basically throw the burden at the collective group, akin to saying "one of you basturds did this...you figure it out!"

While it may be that the cam gear material was bad...it sounds more likely (and a simplier arguement to make) that the advised matchup for the distributor gear was wrong.

Hope you get some answers (and money). There is simply no reason why this crap can't be standardized and, as suggested, a cam gear can't be provided with each cam based upon the customer's spec of the distributor to be used.