Background: I drive a '54 Ford Customline with the 223-Inline 6... In early Dec., I noticed a shit-ton (that's a scientific term) of smoke belloowing out of the breather cap and exhaust, so parked her and broke her down. Blown rings on 5 of 6 pistons... ouch... Bored the engine, new bearings and the whole nine yards, some duct tape and superglue later and I've got her back to together and ready to turn over... Now up until last night, we had the regular hick-ups...(distributor off by 180 degrees, yada yada) Finally got her to commit to firing and running last night, but noticed a new problem. The oil's not being pumped up to the rockers. So we removed to dizzy, and used a drill to turn the oil pump shaft inside the block, and it took to pumping...so I know the pump works... When you turn the rotor on the dizzy, the gear at the bottom of the dizzy shaft turns... and vise versa... We even did our best to measure the length of the shaft on the dizzy and the depth of the pump shaft from the connecting point to the top of the block(where the distributr mounts to the block)... Now I'm baffled... "Anyone else experience this?" is a cliche question, I know... 70 years of hotrodding, and the idea of this being a new one sounds ridiculous, but if anyone's had this problem and has a moment to shed some light on how I could work to remedy said pain in my ass, I'd greatly appreciate your time.
May sound stupid but I chased a similar problem and after 2 days found the roll pin holding the gear sheared off. .59 pennys later was all fixed.
It looked like the one I had was there, but the pin sheared off between the two mating surfaces and nothing fell out. It felt tight when turning it by hand, but under torque from the engine it spun. Didn't figure it out untill I noticed the dist rotor was always pointed the same way everytime I pulled the cap!
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