When I bought the engine the dist gear had 2 broken teeth side by side and one on the opposite side. I installed a new gear and started the engine. I could hear a knocking noise from the front cover area. I pulled the distributor expecting to find the same thing, but it was OK. I had to replace the distributor because it was too tall and the cap was touching the inner fender. I replaced it with a Mallory (much shorter then the MSD). As soon as I started it up it sounded worse than before so I pulled the dist again and there was a tooth missing. I pulled the front cover but don't see anything wrong. What could it be? Thanks,
You don't see any damaged teeth on the cam gear? Some covers require a longer dizzy shaft for a bushing in the bottom of the cover. Does your dizzy shaft extend much below the gear?
Thanks for the reply. Upon further inspection I did find a small burr on one tooth. Could that be the problem? My cover doesn't have the facility for the long shaft. I did have to cut the "Mallory" shaft since it comes with the long configuration.
Are all cam gears replaceable? I thought aftermarket cams had the gear cast as part of the cam as in picture.
The gear on the front of the cam is cast into the cam if it is a late made afermarket cam. The stock ford cams and the early made aftermarket cams had a replacable cam gear. The gear that drives the dist. gear.
'49's right on the money! The ledge in the cover is for the longer shaft dist. Some will put the wrong dist shaft lenght in and have issues. After you cut the shaft did you have to drillout the hole for the drift pin? I have seen a few of those come to me for re-curving where the hole was not cut square, The gear does not ride in the same plane and kinda wobbles. This will chew them suckers up real quick!
A friend of mine is a machinist, and we did the drilling precisely. The problem has happened with 2 different distributors. The MSD was factory installed. I don't think that is the cause. I double checked my drive gear and it appears to be replaceable. I found a bad tooth on the timing gear also. Probably from loose teeth flying around. I'm ordering a new drive gear, dist gear and timing gear. I hope I can change these with the engine in the car. My main concern is reinstalling the drive gear. If anyone has done this I'd like to hear from you. Thanks guys!
The timing gear is available in fiber or aluminum. Mine is aluminum. Changing is easy; 4 bolts thru the gear(s) and a lock plate. Make sure you align the timing/crankshaft gears with the marks.
blown49, Thanks for all of your interest. You've been a big help, but the bad luck continues. Crank gear shot. The engine will have to come back out for the fourth time. That's my luck so far. I ordered all new front gears, but I just wish I knew what caused this in the first place.
"...wish I knew what caused this in the first place" Well, I'm puzzled. I think I would start the thinking by dropping a stock distrib into the front cover and closely comparing its gearlocation with aftermarket, BUT as I type I realize the constants are the front cover and the drive gear on the cam. I would closely compare those parts with an original gear and another front cover, looking at how gear position ends up in there. Also try MARKING gear mesh by turning things over with something like heavy bearing grease on the gears to see pattern. I tend to be very suspicious of recent replacement parts and would likely swap the drive gear for one puleed from an original cam. AND...if you simply HOLD the front cover in place by hand while engine is turned by hand...can you feel any funny thrusts as the gears rotate together?? Seems like if mesh was wrong, gears might try to move the front cover/distributor. Also try this with distributor just set in place in its well.
I guess I'd like to take that coupe off of your hands to eliminate your troubles but guess that's not realistic. Sorry you have to pull the engine again. Let's start with some basics; engine is later model 8BA? Thrust is different between early models and late. I believe early models load the cam gear towards the block and the later gears load toward the timing cover. Make sure the gears you ordered are for the right generation motor. I had a motor one time that had bad crank gear teeth; looked like someone used a pipe wrench on the crank gear teeth, you could see the wrench jaw teeth marks on the tops of the gear teeth. The motor was stuck and maybe someone tried to break it free with the pipe wrench. I agree with Bruce I'd be looking for a different timing cover as well. After as many teeth failures as you've had it may be difficult to find the root cause of the problem.
Hey dude....don't get discouraged....it happens to all of us at one time or another! Just think of the small things this gives you a chance to do.....layout your exhaust for some cable operated cutouts, etc, etc, etc.................
I am not a Flathead guy but since he is talking about all the gears including the crank gear going bad at one time or another, I wondering if the motor was align bored and something is wrong there??
I think the trouble has to be up at the cam level...something is dimensionally wrong, throwing off mesh position, or the distrib drive and/or driven gears are cut incorrectly... there is some significant violence to break gears and not just grind'em to hell, too. I would line up all the stock pieces and start comparing/swapping bits to see what gives.
I'm way past discouraged. My wife has me on suicide watch. LOL Bruce, I wish I had a lot of original parts to compare to, but I don't. Don't know anyone in my area that does. I guess I'll just replace everything and keep my fingers crossed.
Ol' Henry made a bulletproof cam drive...then they up and introduced all that monkey motion as soon as he died...
Contact Flathead Jack for some good info. Also, might try contacting the counter help at EGGE. They are both real good on flatty info.
The problem is violent enough to break teeth quickly rather than just grinding them, Try the hand crank tests with castings held in place, no bolts, and see if there is pushing. Something is grossly wrong. If you can ID that motion, next step has to be swapping the suspect parts. I think immediate need is a Hamber near you who can lend a stock distrib, and old cam-end distributor gear, and another front cover to compare! Even though two distributors had the problem, driven gear couls still be a suspect...might have been a batch of repros with teeth cut wrong or something. This is a powerful problem to break stuff, so see if you can get it to MOVE stuff without the bolts.
The early 8BA motors had what I call the long support distributor with a cast iron front cover. I'm not sure when they changed or if they even changed all of the 8BA/CM type blocks or not but most of the later Ford car and Mercury front covers that I've seen were aluminum and had a very short support housing on the distributor. The shaft sticks out a lot more than the early type. The bit of shaft that sticks out below the distributor gear went down into a bore in the aluminum cover giving better support to the tip end of the shaft. If you have one of these aluminum front covers and your using an old style distributor with the unsupported end, it's probably bottoming out before it meshes with the cam mounted distributor drive gear.
rotorwrench, I don't have the long shaft or the long shaft timing cover. Looks like the one on the right. It's actually the one in the bottom picture. Bruce, I'm collecting some parts to do as you suggest. Here's a picture of mine. I installed the cover and distributor and measured the gap between the dist. hsg. and the timing cover. This picture is set at that spacing, since the cyl. hd. determines how far down in the hole it goes. I also measured my dist. and a used stock dist. and the length from the bottom of the clamping boss is the same.
Gene, you posted this on 6/3/09: It has an upgraded cam but I don't know what it is. I have a video of the engine running before I bought it and it sounds good. I removed the timing cover to see if there was a number on the end of the cam but there wasn't. <!-- / message --><!-- sig --> __________________ Did you see any cam or crank gear damage when this was done?
gene I would almost bet your problem is at the cam level. I know of no other reason for your gear damage and looking at the pictures of the set up I put my bet in the Cam or gear drive on the cam as the culprit.
It would seem to me that the crank gear tooth possibly went first. If this did happen the cam gear would fail from that bad tooth @ 180 degree intervals, which it did. (cam gear = 44 teeth crank gear = 22 teeth). When the pressure plate/clutch/flywheel stuck in the tranny adapter what did you do to free it up? Were you turning it with the starter when it stuck? Jim
Hey Jim, I'm not sure of which senerio would make me the happiest. As far as the trans adapter goes, I was turning the engine over by hand to find TDC when it stopped turning. I checked eberything I could with the engine in the car. When I couldn't find the problem I pulled the engine. I knew it wasn't an internal problem. As soon as I remove the adapter I saw the problem. My next door neighbor owns a machine shop and is hot rod knowledgeable. He just removed about .030 from the I.D.
Bruce is it possible for an oil pump to seize? Since he's gonna have the engine out I think I would be looking at it closely along with the drive gear on the back of the cam. I can't see a stuck valve causing this myself but I guess it could happen. Hey Glen was the failed timing gear aluminum or fibre?
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