Reply to "Double pinning distributor gear?"

I respectfully disagree on the pump driveshaft issue. Wrecking yards have lots of Ford engines (not just Clevelands) in which the stock soft steel driveshafts are twisted or broken. It's easy to spot; the driveshafts are hexagonal and the edges are often twisted in a graceful spiral. Additionally, the hex-edges that actually drive the pump are worn almost round in some engines. A round shaft will not power an oil pump for long. A characteristic of Ford V-8s is, a broken oil pump shaft does not shut the engine down.... for a few minutes. Then it seizes and you get to spend a couple of thousand $$ to overhaul it. Performance driving, high rpms, bolt-on power adders, high-pressure or high-volume oil pumps or even shimming the pump relief valve- all can overstess the pump driveshaft and drive-gear spring pin. A 4130-steel pump driveshaft from Ford Motorsports, Moroso or Milodon will cost less than $20 and IMHO is cheap insurance. They install exactly like stock.
FWIW, the coil-of-thin-steel spring-pin failure mode in distributor drive gears is, impacts from micro-debris going thru the pump progressively cracks the thin layers until the pin breaks in two. On some engines during the progressive failure period, the distributor retards perhaps 20 degrees, causing lots of heat, detonation, pinging and loss of power.
If you have trouble finding real roll pins to double up in your distributor gear, a short piece of drill rod, staked on each end also works. Again, real roll pins or a chunk of drill rod literally only costs a few pennies and is very cheap insurance. Buying a high-buck ignition distributor is no guarantee, either. They all use the same cheap spring pins and they all can fail the same as stock. Both of these breakdowns have happened so often, it ought to be a mandatory upgrade for all pushrod Fords. Tell your mechanic to just do the mods; a free tow-truck ride is not fun at any time.