Hot Rods My 34 Took a crap on the way to the Rumblers Show

Saturday morning on the way to Orlando my 3 window took a crap. Right on the 408 Toll Road. Had to get towed home. This really sucks. I had been working on my car for weeks, Just got it back together last weekend and it was running great. Heading for the Rumblers show at Cowboys, Haulin down the highway, the car just shuts off, turns over but no spark.
Lucky my insurance covered getting the car towed back home. Pulled the dist cap and rotor dosent turn. Pulled the distributor and the gear is chewed all to hell. At first I thought the car jumped time or that the oil pump locked up. After further inspection I find that the oil pump turns free and still pumps and cam timing seems to be ok. Is it common for this to happen? In 30 years of building cars I have never seen this before. Motor is pretty fresh Ford 302 , mild cam, tunnel ram, 2 fours, 4 speed, nine inch with a Mallory Unilite for a dist. I do drive my car pretty hard. Since this is my first ever ford small block, does anyone have any sugestions for a stronger geared distributor? I forgot to mention the teeth on the cam look perfect. Thanks for reading my rant.

 

Evidentily the dist gear was softer than your cam gear, brilliant statement eh? That is a problem when you go to a billet cam, which I assume yours isn't. You could do the same thing that the billet guys do and put a bronze gear on your dist. It won't do that again betcha.

 

Yeah, it happens, main reason they make bronze gears is to keep it from chewin the cam. You are lucky. Put a magnet in the pan to catch it all after you drain the oil.

Check to see if the Mechanical advance is interfering with anything or shaft might be loose, worn bushings(prolly already checked this). My guess is that that dizzy gear was worn some before and finally gave up the ghost.

 

Is it a hydraulic roller cam engine? IIRC, Ford used steel distributor gears on the 85-up roller engines, and iron distributor gears on the non-roller engines (regardless of year). The iron gears get chewed up by the newer cams.
If it is a hydraulic roller engine, the easiest distributor to get is the one for a 1985 Mustang GT with a manual trans. Its a Duraspark dist with vac advance, instead of being one of the newer EEC distributors with electronic advance.
If its not, I've got no idea what happened...

 

I think the show was jinxed...my fuel pump on my roadster shit the bed on me..I barely got home.