Inliners International Forums General Discussion Engines 54 235 Distributor gear

Looking into Langdon's HEI distributor for the truck. It says that pre 54 needs hardened distributor drive gear. That part is clear cut. The big question is that it currently has an Isky cam that I bought new in the 70s. I am not sure, but seem to recall that tey advertised their cams as hardened. What advice can anyone give on which distributor drive gear to use? Thanks, G.H.

GH,

The May 1955 HRM article discusses the camshaft and distributor gear matching on page 19. What year and size is your engine? The trick is to determine if your cam is steel or cast iron. A traditional method is to strike the camshaft (not on a lobe) with a piece of hard steel. If the strike makes a clean ring the cam is probably steel; if the sound is a dull thud the cam is probably cast iron, even if it hardened. This may not be easy to do with an assembled engine.

During the tech talks at the 2008 convention in Iowa, Tom Langdon talked about the cam-gear compatibility. Can you tell whether your current distributor gear is steel or cast iron? Tom said that it can be difficult to tell sometimes. Could the existing gear be put on the HEI distributor?

I'm not sure if I've given a definite answer. Does someone have a better answer?

Thank you, I posed the same question to Tom Langdon and he sent me some helpful info also that will help identify. I appreciate the input!