DeTomaso Mailing List: August 98, Message #304

Okay, so the gear wears.  This seems to be a big PROBLEM to me.  If it is
wearing, does this mean that you get all the "wear" as little tiny shaving
in your oil???   Isn't this REALLY bad??  Now I expect that the oil filter
is supposed to keep this stuff away from the bearing.  Is this just
considered normal engine wear?  And part of the reason we replace bearings
every so often?

One of the guys at Road America had a problem with his gear, stock gear
roller cam, so the gear was destroyed.  But that's an awful lot of metal
floating around in the oil pan/system.

Confused or un-necessarily worried??
Paul
#9270

-----Original Message-----
From: JDeRyke@aol.com <JDeRyke@aol.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <detomaso@realbig.com>
Date: Friday, August 07, 1998 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: distributor gear question


>In a message dated 8/6/98 3:31:56 PM, wpk@fc.net wrote:
>snip...
><<...What's the story on this and also what's the deal with the bronze
gears
>vs the steel ones ? They particularly emphasize the need to change the
>distributor
>gear if going from a hydraulic tappet to a roller tappet cam. Why ?>>
>
>Don't know why anyone would arbitrarily change a stock dist drive gear.
Check
>it for condition, maybe reshim it for play if there's too much, but thats
all
>I'd do.
>Stock cams are cast iron; roller tappet cams are made of (usually) 8740
steel
>and thus the integral steel cam gear is not compatible with stock iron dist
>gears. Bronze gears are cheap to make by the aftermarket guys but wear
>rapidly, giving the effect of a worn timing chain. I'd change a bronze gear
>about every 15000 miles (check first). Be careful swapping dist gears- its
>easy to put the gear at the wrong height on the shaft, thus not engaging
the
>cam gear properly & destroying the cam as well as the dist gear. I've seen
>brand new bronze 351C gears that had the pin hole at the wrong height. Also
>saw one set too low- the dist gear got hot & seized against the block!
Cheers-
>J DeRyke
>
>