I recently replaced the 460 in my 85 F250 with a 429. This engine seems to wants to destroy whatever distributor gear I put in it and it even chewed the gear off the cam once. Any ideas?

 

You could have a mis alignment problem with the dist gear and the cam, that would cause that. I am having the same problem in my 351W. The stock gear that came with the MSD dist was ate up in just 2 or 3 thousand miles. I actually have 2 engines setup like this and they are both eating the dist gear. My local ford engine builder said this was a common problem with small fords running high volume oil pumps, which i am. Apparently the drive gear is just not stout enough to handle the extra load of the HV oil pump. MSD told me to use the steel gear they offer. I am hesitant to do this as i read a post somewhere where a guy did this and then the weakest link became the drive teeth on the cam and it destroyed itself. My local guy said they drill a .060 hole in the oil galley which allows oil to squirt right on the two gears as they mesh and that fixes the problem. Me personally think i am going to take out my HV oil pump as i really don't need them anyway, wasted money. The extra load of driving the HV oil pump lowers your milage and just puts extra strain on the cam and dist drive gears.