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I have a 1988 Bronco 5.0/AOD with Dist. mounted TFI that I swapped a 5.0 into from a 1992 5.0/E4OD (2wd) donor truck. So I've been monkeying with a distributor from richporter tech and finally took it back and got my money out of it. But now my question is what to do for a distributor. I have the '92 remote TFI dist (presumed good) with steel gear (which I need) and a '88 dist mounted TFI dist. that I believe either has a bad pip or TFI. I'm looking at making a remote mount using the '92 like this: How To-351 remote TFI on fox wiring harness - Ford Mustang Forums : Corral.net Mustang Forum
Or I swap a steel gear onto the '88 dist. and fix/replace the tfi/pip.
Or find a quality replacement for a reasonable price, the dealership has the distributor listed as discontinued.
To complete the remote tfi wiring on the 92 distributor I'd need some good wiring diagrams, because the ones I have found so far are incomprehensible to me.
A mustang or crown Vic dist from late 80's early 90's combines the dist mounted tfi and steel gear you need. I have replaced a pip sensor using the thexton puller and it was a pain. Much easier to get the drop in solution and not mess with all the disassembly or wiring. I agree on avoiding the reman ones. They sandblast the housing and the tfi mount is no longer nicely milled flat surface finish (maybe no big deal). Also they test and reuse the pip sensors. So all you get is the sandblast job and bushings. The stock bushings are pretty good so a decent used dist with a new motorcraft tfi would be a good way to go.
Also I remembered... When I looked up distributors for my 88, autozone and other catalogs listed both steel and iron gears as available. Pretty sure they didn't use roller cams until the 90's trucks but cars got the roller cams earlier than that. Mine definitely was iron for the flat tappet cam.
Put the steel gear on the '88 distributor after you install a new MotorCraft PIP module(shaft must come out to do that).. and plug it in, unless you live somewhere really hot you won't have much problem with TFI heat failures.