SC distributor bushing replacement

[NOLAsc]

Okay. So... I could tell by the distributor cap that something was amiss on my '82 SC.


Well there was some noise too. And performance was off.

I've had the car about a year and only just learned about oiling under the felt under the rotor. Not sure if any of the POs took care of this in its 141K+ miles. Anyway. It is what it is. There's lots of axial and radial play. I don't know if it can be resurrected or not.

The top bushing is shot. Really.

The blue arrow points to a place that seems to have suffered considerable wear. That circle that the red arrow points to is the bushing, right? That can come out, right? I'm thinking it needs to go to a machine shop for that.

I've read a bunch of threads on the topic. (Thanks Gunter, 88-diamondblue, Draco, Tim Hancock, Superman and many others.) Here's what I'm thinking:
- Get old bushing out
- Find a new bushing at a bearing place and install it (or have the machine shop do it)
- Check axial play by reassembling and measuring with feeler gauges at the drive gear? Or is there a way to measure the height of the shaft itself against the housing -- how much it sticks up into the cap?
- If the bushing is too tall to reassemble, I guess the shop could machine down the installed bushing

At the drive gear, there was one metal washer and one cracked fiber one (at rotor side, there was a super thin metal washer and thin remnants of another). I've read that I can put metal instead of the fiber. Any idea of how thick those washers should add up to at the bottom? It looks like they didn't suffer the wear of the upper ones, so I thought I might just replace with a similar thickness of those combined.

More to come... I've got plenty more "before" pics. Looking forward to posting a more complete write-up -- particularly if the "after" goes well.

[Jdub]

Sorry only to be able to provide my brief experience at Rebuilt the distributor on my '78SC..

I was not able to find a rebuild kit (numbers in post above). If you have any more luck than we did please let us know.

Not sure on what year car but if you have an early '78 hold on to that pinion gear - it is particular to the cam you are running in that car.

[fritzgator]

I have same issue, only just axial play on mine. I cleaned it up and reassembled it but now i have a 100rpm surge @3800-4100. I'll be sending it out to Barry at IAE (313-532-5350) in a couple of weeks for a rebuild. evidently he's the go to guy. We should get together for a drive when both our cars are up. I'm up around ponchatoula. even drive hwy22?

[brads911sc]

Send it to Barry Hershon in Detroit. It will come back like new... There are very few places that actually have the parts to rebuild these. Do a search. Quite a few posts on this...

[MBruns]

Send it to Barry, like all of us he can use the work, turn around will be quick
Mike Bruns JBRacing.com

[NOLAsc]

Thanks Y'all.

I called and left a message for Barry at the number Gator offered. (And yeah, Gator... we should go for a drive. I don't know if I've ever driven Hwy 22.)

Jdub... I should have credited you (and I'm sure Early S Man) among the list of people I should thank for their insights on this forum. I recall reading your thread.

[NOLAsc]

Update: Talked to Barry. He DOES sound like the guy for these things. But I'm into this project at this point and am inclined to keep going in the little windows that I have. Barry was happy to hear that I marked the gear and shaft for reassembly and that I knew which way the pin came out.

Today, I went to a place that I went to 20+ years ago to do machine work on one or both (memory fails) of my 914s. Today, they pulled both bushings out of the diz. The first bearing supply place I tried didn't have anything that could be cut to fit. Having a job with deadlines kills tomorrow as far as the bushing search goes. I hope for progress next week.

[NOLAsc]

So the top bushing was toast. I took it to a machine shop, and they pulled both bushings for me. And I went on a search at bearing places around town with little success. I ended up ordering a pair of bushings from LM Tarbell. Very helpful people.
They did not have the size I needed (although they could have custom cut ones for me), but the machine shop was able to put them on a lathe for the OD. Then they installed them and honed out the inside to fit (inside was pretty close -- didn't take much cutting).

The guys at the machine shop also cut down some old flange bushings for shims.

It's back together now.


Seems to be working fine.
One last image -- one of the first I shot. When I started this, I threw down some newspaper on the workbench. After a while of working, I noticed that the photo on the page was Dizzy Gillespie. I don't really know what to make of that, but...


Thanks for the help everyone.

[brads911sc]

Looks great. My concern would be the wear characteristics and durability of fabricated parts. In short, will it last 100,000 miles like the Porsche parts would have... Guess time will tell...

[NOLAsc]

Right. But it sure works better now than it did a couple of weeks ago.

[James Brown]

And that is what is holding every one up. Bosch hates home DIY people. It's just 2 bushings! Good job NOLAsc, a good machine shop can do this for anyone. Now, the cats out of the bag and anyone can have there dissy rebuilt like new. But, send them to Barry!

[NOLAsc]

Well, I'm not sure that mine is quite "like new." The play is gone though. Barry's the guy for "like new" from what I hear. When I talked to him, he knows these things.