Replacing cam drive gear

[Gambler68]

For the first time since 2007, I have to dive into the guts of the 360 in Sundog..during a breakdown in Ouray this july, we pulled the dizzy to check it and the gears were beveled..poked down in the hole and saw the drive gears were razor sharp and thin..drove it home and parked that beast.

I got a matched set of Omix Amada for about 40 bux shipped from Quadratec..going to soak em in oil and hope for the best. I've been researching this issue (especially with post-fresh install shearing) and it looks to me that it's not the money you spend on hardened high end gears like Bulltear or MSD..it's the setup. The dizzy gear HAS to be centered properly, it's not a 'drop and hope' situation. As long as there isn't a ton of cam walk, as long as the dizzy gear is at the right height, all should be good. This is accomplished with using a o-ring gasket, and shims if need be. Fresh timing chain will be installed of course as well, and likely throw a new water pump on it. All this so I can finally enjoy the AWESOME Truck Avenger upgrade I made this summer and got to enjoy for oh, 3 days. (really, the carb upgrade from an old 1406 was major, highly happy with it).

I'll be posting pics and hoping I'm right

And Michel, if you read this, thank you for the parts to get home, I'll be contacting you after the rebuild. Thanks as well to everyone else during the trip that sacrificed a day of wheeling to get me back to camp and sorry about vapor locking every jeep I rode in back up to the scene of the crime :P

[letank]

We were all glad that you made it home without the need for a tow.
Keep the distributor as long as you need it, I am sure that we can find a trade at some point. I'll make sure that I grab a spare at the next junkyard visit.

Your distributor came from a 84 w 180ish Kmiles, I ran it on the 85 for 400 miles a while back to test it. I did not match any gears... just popped it in on the side of the road... but I knew the potential issues (below).
Same w the 74, when the pertronix cooked after 80Kmiles, popped an HEI from another spare rig... and it has ran well for the last 30Kmiles... no gear matching either....BUT a VERY important point is to make sure that there are no interferences ... by manually rotating first the distributor, then the crank for a turn... as seen below:


So at this point you may have the TFI shown in the above pict, w the slight nick when I tried to install it in the 74. The ebay special was returned because there was too much free play, and I could not rotate the distributor as the HEIhump for the wires was bumping the PS pump, or the vacuum advance was in the way.

Just put some ZDDP, redline sells a pint of it and you need a few ounces per oil change in the oil as an insurance.