My 401 has almost 900 miles since I rebuilt it. It's been a few years, and its done alot of sitting in the garage. I been wanting to drive it more lately, but I've been affraid of my dizzy/cam gear. I installed a msd pro billet distributor, and a stock cam gear. On my 500 mile oil change I thoiught I saw some small sparkles in the oil(metal?). So I haven't been driving it much. Today I finally got some time to pull the distributor. I am running an external oil line to the distributor gear, a nylon cam button from AM Racing and an all billet timing chain set from Rollmaster. I installed a high pressure oil spring that I am going to remove. My oil pressure is too high. It's runs 80-90 psi running down the road, and about 40-50 psi idle hot. I am affraid of putting to much stress on the gears. Here is what the dizzy gear looked like. Normal Wear? The cam gear looked about the same.
1. The increased pressure spring is a bad idea for a street motor and running that kind of pressure will put additional stress on the gears and oil filter
2. The lube line was intended for use only with the milodon gear drive. Initially they didnt have a oiling provision
3. That gear looks like it is trying to set a pattern and looks fantastic...hard to say what the cam gear looks like
4. Nylon cam buttons for a AMC are a complete waste of money. They are marketed to stop cam walk but the only cam walk you will experience ever is with a roller camshaft and on an AMC V8 the cam button will push a hole through the timing cover if you have walk.
Cam gear looked good (I couldn't get a good pic since I did't remove the timing cover). So I reinstalled the distributor. I also replaced the high pressure oil pump spring with a stock spring. Now my oil pressure is a more manageable 65 psi cold, 65 psi hot running down the road and 25 hot psi at idle, using Valvoline VR1 10w30.
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