Distributor gear chewed after engine rebuild

[Jacksonclouds]

After the engine rebuild of my 2.5 98 TJ car started first try, sounded great! But after 150 miles only car stopped in the middle of the highway. After further inspection at home distributor wasn’t turning. Turned out to be distributor gears completely chewed and destroyed…

I did some recap, and I bought the camshaft from titan engines as a master engine rebuild kit. Because it didn’t come with a new distributor gear I bought one from crown.

Right now I’m just so depressed I’ve putted so much money work and effort and I don’t know what to do next, I’m afraid of putting a new gear and the same thing happen again
The cam seems to be ok, I already cleaned the engine. I just don’t know why this could happened. I looked a lot for similar threads but I can’t find anything.
I would appreciate any help I’m really down at the moment.

 

[Daryl]

That does suck! Does the distributor shaft turn smoothly by hand? How was the oil pressure after the rebuild?

 

[Jacksonclouds]

Well yeap, whe I turned it by hand I looked good, I think that the gear pattern was exactly the same, and I called both the place were I bought the cam and they said it’s a normal cam, material and everything.
The things I thought of are maybe lack of lubrication, since I don’t know how those gears gets lubricated…. I thought about cam play as well…. The distributor had about 1or two vertical mm of play, but I don’t know if is enough reason to get destroyed in 150 miles…

 

[Daryl]

Just to be clear, you‘ve turned the distributor shaft by hand and it turns smoothly, yes? And your oil pressure gauge read what pressure after the rebuild?

 

[Jacksonclouds]

Ohh sorry, yeap oil pressure was great, 2 at idle and over 4 when reving, and the distributor seems ok, it turns ok, I thought it might have broken bearings… or something like that, but I opened it and I doesn’t have bearings, I think only the 05 and 06 opda’s had bearings which went bad and made similar mess on cam and distributor gears…

 

[Daryl]

What does the oil pump drive shaft look like?

 

[Jacksonclouds]

Let me take a pic

 

[Jacksonclouds]

I don’t think it looks too bad, you tell me… There was like tiny pics of plastic chunk inside of it, but I think it was old oil…
You can see the play it has once mounted, could that be enough to brake it?

 

[Daryl]

Stick a large flat blade screwdriver into the oil pump and see if you can turn the shaft.

 

[Jacksonclouds]

Yeah it turns with no problem, I even took the oil pump out and cleaned it sucking diesel and turning it by hand, worked really good… wasn’t hard

 

[Daryl]

Well, I don’t have an answer as to why the gear failed. You know the camshaft & distributor gear need replaced. If you decide to reuse the distributor, at least polish the shaft before reassembly. I’m also not a fan of crown parts. Get a gear from pioneer or someone like that.

 

[Jacksonclouds]

Thanks man, I can post a pic of the cam, but I doesn’t look bad to me… I suppose I can reuse the old one I have, but I’m in a really tight budget plus I am in Spain and there aren’t parts here. I ended un paying nearly 1000$ Only for the rebuild kit, something that over there in USA is only 330$