HEI problem and Gasket use?

[cobra5laddict]

a while back i bought a hei dist for my 360 from summit. it is proform. (yeah yeah it was before i knew about bulltear, otherwise i would have gotten it here) anyway. while i was swapping out the dist gear to the one i have with the match set i noticed that the rotor was loose. i pulled it all apart and the advance plate that is supposed to be attached to the dist shaft was loose. i grabbed it to see if it were loose and it came off in my had.


great, i called Summit and the mfgr. they both told me the part is out of warranty great. i have never even used it and this is the second time it has been out of the box.

so, i taked to a mechanic friend of mind and he has heard of this before (mainly on caddy hei's) he said that sometimes they work themselves loose and create all kinds of headaches.

THE FIX

this is what i am thinking about doing; pull the shaft out of the dist and remove all the mechanical advance springs and weights. then tap the advance plate back on the shaft.. then tack weld the two together (all while trying to keep everything true..)

am i nuts?
is this going to work? if not i am out $200 bucks
any other thoughts?


another quick question.
a gasket came with the dist that goes between the timing cover and the dist base. it got me thinking ... if someone did not use that it sure would change the relationshipbetween the cam gear and dist gear.

the reason i ask is i have seen about 50% one way and 50% another..

thoughts?

[jeepsr4ever]

The gasket is NOT crucial to distributor gear wear.....NOT CRUCIAL. Many believe that a gasket or O-ring are necessary for the gears tooth engaugement. This is not the case however not all distributors are created equal. Some of the aftermarket distributors and the early runs of aftermarket timing covers allow the distributor stem to sit too far into the cover and the bottom of the distributor runs on the cam gear and the distributor gear is too far down. One way to tell is to run your distributor for a 100 miles or for 10 hrs and check the wear and adjust accordingly using gaskets or O-rings to set the wear point in the middle of the gear.

We have had similar issues with the Pro-form distributor and have even epoxied the weight and spark cap to the shaft after cleaning with de-greaser. These aftermarket parts that come from China arent exactly up to par and the quality can stink.

[cobra5laddict]

do you feel that epoxy or JB weld would be enough to hold that advance plate / rotor to the shaft.

or should i say has the epoxy worked for you and lasted? i cant imagine too much stress is on that plate.




good call on the possibility of re-alignment of the dist after break in, i plan on checking the gear closly several times.

i have your front cover, matched gears and i have checkec all oil ports on the timing set/ gears.

[jeepsr4ever]

Yes the epoxy or JB weld if mixed correctly will be more than enough to keep the two together. The splines on the inside that were pressed on will catually take the torque of the spinning distributor so youll be fine there.

You got a good setup...please post some pics when you get the bugs worked out :t:

[cobra5laddict]

:? THANKS i appriciate the feedback.. i will start up a thread once i get this beast fired up.