If any of you remember, on December 5 2010, I posted that my 1985 245 had jumped timing, and my helping to push it into the garage precipitated me having a heart attack, which required open heart surgery to correct.

With the assistance of a good friend, I got the timing reset, and the car back on the road. I kept a nagging question in my mind as to why the car jumped timing. I had replaced the distributor during the repair, and had laid the original distributor aside.

On inspecting the distributor, I could find nothing wrong initially, but on reflecting, I remembered hearing a squeal from the engine compartment just prior to the engine shutting down. I had originally blamed that on the alternator belts.

I was holding the distributor in my hand, and idly spun the drive gear. The distributor gave forth a squeal when spun. I kept spinning the shaft, and hearing and feeling the squeal. There was a distinct vibration present.

I drove out the gear locating pin, and removed the gear. I removed the shaft from the distributor, and found excessive wear at the lower bushing position. That's when I went back to my Bentley Manual, and looked at the service record for the car that I keep in the book. There it was. I had replaced the distributor with one that I had purchased on ebay to use as a spare when I did the 120K service, and timing belt change. I had initially done this while attempting to correct a slight flutter when accelerating lightly from a stop. The replacement distributor did not correct this problem, but cleaning the TB did.

I don't know why the bushing in this distributor failed, but fail it did. There was no sign of any galling, but the bushing was totally worn out. I suppose that the used distributor that I had purchased had a ton of miles when I bought it.

At any rate, that's what caused the problem, including the heart attack. Nothing like a quarter million dollar used part.