Ok as some of you have heard I've had a few hiccups with my motor nothing major the main problem was it wiped out the gear on my msd distributer so I drained it all out and installed a used ford distributer to see if I was lucky and that it might have been a faulty gear(the distributer was new) anyway nope It has the teeth sharp on this one now too so nothing left to do but replace the cam by the way it was new as well.......and before it comes up yes the cam is cast and so was the gear on the distributer.......I'm gonna go ahead and just pull it all back out and inspect everything and make sure nothing else was damaged(everyone should heed the words of Old guy) why take a chance and just swap cams.
I can feel your pain. Once my Sprint was done, I had to change the cam 2 more times. I was wiping out lobes though, not gears. What mfg cam did you use?
Robert - I did the same thing about a year ago on my 429. I installed a high volume oil pump with fairly tight bearing clearances and 10W30 oil. Stupid me didn't switch to a bronze gear. Hope everything turns out OK for you. I had to put a .060 thrust washer on the bottom of the gear to re-align the gears because the torque of the pump was so strong the cast gear ate into the boss on the block. Talk about pinching a knot in my underwear when I saw that. Cleaver
The cam in it now is an ultradyne.....I have my old cam I will most likely put it in....it's a mellings solid lift and so was the ultrdyne....lucky for me the block looked fine I'll pull it back out and down in a week or so when I have the time and can get it back up to my work.....
I'm putting a Melling high volume (+25%) oil pump in my 302, and wondered why that causes Dist gear problems. You've got me worried. I'm still running the Duraspark distributor, and I think it's a bronze gear. Do I have a problem I don't know about yet? What's the scoop? Grant
Grant - I know there are several machinists here that know more about this than myself, but I can explain my experiences. Generally speaking - a high volume oil pump takes more power to turn therefore requiring more torque on the cam and distributor gear. I say generally speaking because - you need to size the oil pump to your bearing clearances vs. what oil pressure you want to hold and what weight oil you want to run. I screwed up (more or less) by having my machinist size the rod and crank journals around .002 which is generally considered street application. Without regard for this I tossed in a HV oil pump with 10W30 oil. The oil pressure when warm at idle stood around 55 lbs. Anything over about 5000 rpm the pressure went off the 80 lb gauge. I made two passes at the strip shifting at 6200 and noticed the engine popping like it was out of time. I pulled the distributor and found the teeth about half eaten off. Basically I was overloading the gears. I could have probably used the HV pump with 5W15 oil or if I had the bearing clearances opened up and been OK with a standard gear. I just replaced the cam and drive gear and went back to the standard oil pump. I still can maintain about 65lb oil pressure with the standard pump. I mentined a bronze gear because they can handle more load than the sintered iron stockers. Also, I stick to the old racers guide of 10 lb oil pressure per 1000 RPM. Anything more and you are just wasting HP due to the extra HP it takes to drive the pump and windage loss (my opinion). On the flip side - you can take high mileage worn out engines with no pressure and dump in 50W oil to get the pressure up (sleazy used car salesman tactic) or go to a HV pump to compensate. If you drop in a HV pump - just think through the other factors and you should be OK. Sorry for being so long. Hope I didn't bore you to death. Cleaver
Thanks for a great answer! I ordered a high volume oil pump at an early point in the rebuild of my 77 302, thinking it would reduce the amount of oil sludge throughout the block & heads. I thought the pump was bad, and "more is better" when it come to oil circulation. Last week, I found the source of the black hard rubber chunks in the oil pan were pieces of the valve umbrellas that were "toast". The chunks covered the oil sump screen and starved the engine of oil, causing overheating and the heavy varnish. Now that I've discovered the source, I was worried that I was creating another problem (distrib gear crunch) by over correcting another. I'll install an oil pressure guage, and stick with the HV pump, and possibly use a low viscosity oil. Sounds like a logical fix to me! Thanks for setting me straight! Grant
