I have a problem with the dist. gear, seems every time I set the dist. in the motor the gear runs for 10 min. I loose 20% of that gear, something is moving & I hope someone can give me some ideas for a repair... thanx, eltweedy

 

If you go into the "Recalls/TSBs" section on this site and type in your year of truck you will find that Ford put out a service bulletin on that problem. Service bulletin #89611 says that the EEC-IV distributor and gear are a matched set and neither should be replaced seperately. I would also use some of that "cam break-in" lubricant on the new gears and if your engine has a lot of miles on it, it could be possible the gears on the cam are worn are the cam thrust plate is worn allowing it to "walk". Deen

 

I have broken 3 gears, all were reconditioned
distributors. This wasn't ever a problem till I
tried to swap timming gear set.
The only other problem in this area was someone
replaced the oil pump drive shaft & left the orignal shaft rattleing in this area, when I fished it out it showed some wear in the middle of the shaft...
Deen if you have any other thoughts, they
would help alot. eltweedy

 

When you replaced the timing gear set...did you pull the cam and possibly nick the cam gear? Pull the cam and not re-torque the cam retaining plate
( I always tighten and use blue "lock-tight")?
Also how many miles are on the engine? If high miles are the cam bearings worn (this could show up as low oil pressure)? Has anyone installed an after market cam that may require a bronze distributor gear (steel cams such as used in a roller cam situation require bronze gears)? Does the oil pump turn fairly easy...you would need to get an oil pump priming shaft to verify this...
I think I'm about out of ideas. Deen

 

I don't know if this will help but I had a similar experience.

A year ago I removed the 400 from my 78 4x4 and replaced it with a 460. At that time I was told by all the "experts" that the distributor for the 400 was exactly the same as that in my 460 so I used it. Well after running the 460 for about one hour the engine just flat quit. I found the distributor was not turning at all. I removed the distributor from the engine block, found that the tips of the gear teeth were missing and compared it to the original distributor that came in the 460. What I found was that the gear at the bottom of the distributor shaft on the 400 distributor was much smaller than the gear on the 460 distributor. It was large enough to just engage
the cam gear and run for a bit but lost its teeth after a short time.

This my be a long shot but if you recently changed your distributor you just might check your old one to make sure that the new one has the correct size drive gear.

If you have the time check out my post on the message board under "460 coldstart miss". This one has really got me scratching my head.

Craig .

 

Ben there done that. tried a windsor dist. in a 460 no workie. check youre roll pin in dist gear mayby sheaed. Done that two.