Thread: Ever Had Distributor Gear Failure?

Ooh.. that's interesting!

Might need to pull the dizzy and double check mine..

That's a good spot. Thanks for replying with that, much appreciated.

Originally Posted by Meccles

Well wow is all i can say. Timing cover off retaining bolt tight cam gear all good. But the distributor drive gear has worn to a knife edge and several teeth failedlots of oil present and gear was on correct way with groove facing the spacer. Nil wear or damage on distributor gear. When fitting distributor drops in easily engages gear as it goes in. When running distributor runs smooth. Lower photo is of genuine drive gear which had done 2000km I'd replaced it as there was small wear evident. This new one lasted less than 1000kms. The Cloyes cam gear set is original I brought in 1988 with new chain only fitted. So - was gear faulty/crap metal? Is cam moving forward and using distributor as thrust washer (but figure if it was that would induce some vibration). Or is shoulder of cam machined wrong and cam gear isn't sitting far enough back along the nose causing misalignment?Attachment 167214
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This forum is the only one I could find that has the same failure as mine, in this case a 1973 MGBGTV8 with the Rover V8 and I needed to join you guys to see the pictures - much appreciated. This failure is barely 2000 miles from a full rebuild and my research would suggest that the oil pump rotors may not have enough clearance and this can put additional stress on the gears, although it appears that the distributor gear is way more robust that the cam drive gear. I also run the high volume/higher pressure oil pump which uses the later Rover SD1 rotors with a sandwich plate, very simple but. Make sure that the gaskets in the "kit" have the two slotted openings, I realised that mine only had one and this could cause excessive over pressure, which was another possible cause. I've just rebuilt the oil pump and found that two gaskets are required to maintain a rotor to base plate gap of 3 thou, anything less than 2 thou could cause problems. Finally I am using the later cam gear with the circular groove to help oil flow as original "pre-SD1" gears are unobtainable here in the UK. Hope this helps and thanks for the pictures.