Not sure if I replaced it but I did check it and everything seemed ok. This has been going on since last fall so I've forgotten some things. It was pointing the right way and moved freely in the bore. I went through the 12 steps for distributor and cam gear wear and think they are all covered. I used an AC Delco PF24 filter. Any issues with these? Going to go to a Wix next try. When I took the filter apart everything seemed ok. I also don't have the filter bypass blocked off. I checked a main bearing and there was a slight amount of debris. Hope I don't have to do all that over again. I am using an aftermarket timing gear which has 6 slots to sling oil to the chain area. Someone wrote on another forum that they always braze 5 of those slots closed so less oil goes there and more to the cam and dist gears. Have you ever heard of having to do that? Apparently the factory gears had no slots. I also ran warm oil through the oil sending unit hole while turning the engine with the oil pan off. Oil streamed from the normal places and in normal quantities except from the front which seemed to stream quite a bit. Couldn't tell if it was from the front cam bearing or from the timing sprocket slots. Any way to tell if the front cam bearing is ok without taking everything apart again? Thanks tufcj for your input.