Steel vs cast iron distributor gear

[coupster]

Can someone shed some light on this problem? I posted a few weeks back about verifying a roller cam motor with an unknown build history. I do know I am working on a roller cam block, and I have verified that the points distributor had the incorrect cast iron gear. The gear on the distributor was worn badly...to the point of making the teeth on the distributor gear as sharp as a knife. My understanding is that the cam gear should be worn as well. When I look into the distributor hole...the cam gear appears to be fine??? From what I have read and researched, the cast gear should've eaten the cam gear. Is this right? The cam gear appears fine... am I not seeing everything by looking into the distributor hole??? We have replaced the points distributor w/ a duraspark distributor with a steel gear. I replaced the oil pump and shaft, changed oil and filter too. The old oil did not have any large chunks of metal in the drain pan, but their was some "color" of metal in it. I have yet to cut open the oil filter to look. We Plan to run this motor until it dies...what do y'all think? I will try to post pictures this evening of the old worn distributor gear...but the new distributor is already back in...so no pics of the cam gear.

coupster

 

[apollard]

The steel cam gear on a roller cam will eat a cast distributor gear.
A steel dist. gear will eat a cast camshaft gear.

So, what you are seeing is normal, I would expect the cam gear to show some minor wear, but not enough to see looking down the dist. mount hole.

 

[66gt350]

:stu :sm_NTA

What he said. The billet steel is harder than the cast and will eat it for lunch.

 

[coupster]

:nut Good enough for me...thanks guys. I was worried that the cam would be going south in a hurry, but it looks like we should be good to go for quite some time. I will begin the electronic conversion and hopefully will fire it up this weekend. Then time to tune it and run the cr*p out of it for awhile. I will post pics soon. YEE HAW!

coupster

 

[coupster]

Here are some pics of the damage. I have the worn distributor gear, and some close-ups of the oil pump. You can see the scarring on the oil pump...but they are not very deep. And then I have a comparison photo of the worn gear next to a distributor from a very tired 302...It has very minimal wear- (it's on the right w/ worn one on the left.)

coupster