Well the distributor cap was not the source of the clacking sound in my B20, it happened with every distributor I tried. I pulled the distributor drive gear and looked at it closely to see that it was pretty chewed up.


I looked at it before but I was mostly looking at the gear face so I might of missed the damage on top but it would have been hard to miss.

The gears teeth look good except for the bottom of two of the teeth.


The interlocking ears at the base of all of the distributors that I tried over the past two day are all pristine, no sign of metal chewing, nice and square. Needless to say there is a lot of slop between the distributor drive gear and the ears on the base of the distributors. I looked as carefully as possible on the drive gear on the camshaft as I rotated it around and I could not see any chunky wear, the normal wear patches on the teeth were a little pitted and not as shiny smooth as some that I have seen. The bushing in the block looked fine (no damage) and was sticking up a bit from the block casting.

What could be the cause of this mode of failure? Could this have happened and not damaged the distributor ears? Planetman mentioned the bushing being out of place and checking the clearance from the oilpan. Any clever ideas of checking/fixing this without dropping the oilpan? Could there be a problem with the camshaft bearings? Could it just be the slop between the worn out groove and the ears? I have a spare drive gear but I am weary of putting it in just to have it chewed up.

Thanks,

Mairo m